


Remains

by electricchicken



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Canon-Typical (Sexual) Violence, College AU, First Time, M/M, episode AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2883482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/electricchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nathan Harris shows up at Reid’s usual subway station, the team gets an uncomfortably close look at their fellow agent’s dating history. </p><p>An alternate take on episode 2.11, “Sex, Birth. Death.” Spoilers through the remainder of season two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ACT I

**Author's Note:**

> Andrea circa 2009 — ported in from my writing Livejournal. In case you're wondering, yes I was reading a lot of Shadow Unit at the time.

_I have heard the key  
Turn in the door once and turn once only  
We think of the key, each in his prison  
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison_  
  
T.S. Eliot  
  
[[In over the cold open —The Garden, by The Creepshow]](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp2UHWuf7UY)  
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
Spencer Reid sneaks a glance at his watch, winces, and nearly drops the cardboard sleeve he’s trying to slip onto his hazelnut latte. 7:50, he’s definitely going to be late. His usual coffee shop is training new staff, using the morning commuter rush as some kind of trial by fire. It doesn’t look like it’s working. The average wait, including queuing time, for an espresso-based drink is usually around five minutes. Today he’s already been here for ten and when he looks at his watch again the minute hand shifts a little close to the hour. If he sprints he might be able to make it to the office in time. Assuming he doesn’t run into anything, trip over anyone, or have to stop to retie his left shoelace, which is already ominously droopy.   
  
The lid pops off the top of the cup and he wastes another 30 seconds trying to cram it back on without spilling any on his shirt. It slops over his hand instead and he hisses and jams his index finger into his mouth, tasting artificial flavouring and the sticky sweetness of high fructose corn syrup. At least it’s going to be a great cup of coffee.  
  
There’s enough room on the stairs to run past the other commuters, and Reid takes them two at a time, clutching his messenger bag to his side to keep it from hitting anyone and keeping up a litany of ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ as his elbow does the job instead.   
  
He’s just launched himself over the last two stairs, one foot on flat ground, the other still arcing up, his eyes already focussed on the sliding doors at the front of the station, when someone steps directly into his path. Reid yelps, skids backward to avoid a full-body crash and ends up back on the stairs.   
  
“Hey,” he starts, without meaning to. He’s not going to argue, arguing makes people late (and other people stare). Instead, he settles for another wince and glances up to see if he can make himself small enough squeeze by. Glances up and sees panicked blue eyes staring directly at him, whites too bright in the dark circles of his eye sockets.  
  
In the station, the 7:55 a.m. train screeches to a standstill. Reid doesn’t even hear it. “Nuh,” the word sticks in his throat and he swallows and tries again. “Nathan?”  
  
This close, Reid can see his pupils dilate, see pale skin turn almost grey. Still skinny, Reid thinks, without wanting to. Taller than he would’ve expected, though, curly hair shorter than he remembers. And now the other commuters are staring anyway, brushing by too close as they climb the stairs. He feels something heavy and metallic settle in the bottom of his stomach, grabs for the railing.   
  
“Sorry.” It comes out soft and scratchy, barely audible. “I should go.”  
  
He knocks against Reid’s shoulder as he goes past, pushing him into the rail, giving himself those extra few seconds to work into the crowd, to duck down and vanish. By the time Reid makes it to the bottom of the stairs there’s no sign of him at all. Somewhere nearby a digital watch beeps, signalling the hour.  
  
It’s not until his fingers starts to throb from the heat that Reid realises he’s still clutching a crushed, mostly empty coffee cup in one hand.  
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
August 1998**  
  
Spencer takes the taxi to the airport by himself. Over the last few years Diana Reid’s fear of flying has turned into a general mistrust of airports and, this year, people who drive to them on a semi-regular basis, as evidenced by her refusal to come downstairs while Spencer helps the driver load his bag into the trunk of the car. She does come to the window, but doesn’t respond when he waves. Spencer isn’t sure she even notices he’s still there.   
  
If he’s being honest with himself—and he tries not to be, these days—he’s never been so relieved to head back to school. But when the Las Vegas desert starts fall away and a few wisps of white cloud appear outside the windows of the plane he feels something unbuckle in his chest for the first time in four months, and tries to ignore the hot rush of self loathing that accompanies it.  
  
He calls home from the first payphone he finds at the Pasadena airport. Leaves a message when his mother doesn’t pick up (it’s only a fifty-fifty chance she will, these days). Reminds her he’s left supper in the refrigerator, and that she has a doctor’s appointment scheduled for next week, and that he’ll call her again as soon as he can. He tries not to choke on the ‘I love you, mom.’  
  
The baggage pickup area is jammed, as usual, and Spencer lets himself smile when he sees his first CalTech sweater.   
  
He wonders, as he does every year, just what the rest of the airport thinks of him: skinny and gangly and nearly eighteen but, he admits with an internal wince, looking more like an unusually tall fifteen year-old. Glasses big enough to weaponize, because the plane always dries his eyes out too much for contacts and hair he cut himself back in July, just to see if he could (he can’t). None of them, he’s fairly certain, would ever guess he has a driver’s licence, much less a PhD and a handful of first-draft pages for a second dissertation saved on his laptop. For the next five minutes, he’s just another teenager, bored and waiting for his bag.   
  
It’s one of the things he likes about coming back.  
  
He scans the crowd to see if there’s anyone he recognises, but the other doctoral candidates he knows don’t have to go home to live with their mothers every summer. Most of his acquaintances (the age difference is too wide for many of them to be friends) will have spent their summers in the library or the lab, not trying to get a middle aged woman to come downstairs for at least one meal a day.  
  
There’s a metal-on-metal grinding as the conveyer belt starts spitting out bags and Spencer pinches himself hard on the inside of the arm and swallows, trying to choke down the stale-tasting lump of guilt that’s threatening to build up in his throat again. He’ll write her at least a three page letter tonight, he promises as he scoops up his bag and heads for the cab stand. Maybe four. He can call again when he gets to campus, too. And that has to be enough, doesn’t it? Enough for him to not hate himself for being happy.  
  
He steps out of the airport, turns his face up to meet the warm California sun, and tries to smile again.  
  
—   
  
It’s been almost a week now, and Nathan Harris still can’t stop staring. At everything really, from the mountains towering crazy-close behind the CalTech campus, to the Mission-style red roofs of the southern dorms, to the robot his RA is building in the South Fishbowl for reasons yet to be determined by anyone on his floor. More specifically, though, he can’t seem to stop himself from watching the boy currently sitting three seats away from him in the dining hall, flipping through a Terry Pratchett novel.  
  
He’s dressed like one of the old men who play chess in the park by Nathan’s apartment building every Sunday, but he’s obviously about his age. And Nathan keeps seeing him everywhere—reading under a tree, walking in what he thinks is the direction of the library. They even passed on the stairs once when he was trying to figure out where, exactly, the open kitchen was. The only place he hasn’t seen him, is at any of the Rotation Week events.   
  
Then again, he supposes an 18 year-old upperclassman wouldn’t be so weird at a school where 15 year-old freshmen are pretty common.   
  
What is weird, is that for all the boy is everywhere all the time, Nathan’s never seen him speak to anyone or do anything, really, other than flip through books like he’s lost his place and can’t remember if it was near the middle or the end.   
  
Then again, Nathan thinks, it’s not like he’s done much talking either. Not unless he counts a few conversations with Kevin, his roommate, who had seemed like a pretty cool guy until he came home on their second night in residence and threw up on a really large portion of their floor.   
  
Maybe this boy is shy. Maybe he’s like Nathan: secretly dying to talk to someone, but too awkward to do much more than give a half-hearted sort of laugh whenever anyone tries to. Maybe he could use a friend.  
  
It’s the same pep talk he’s been giving himself all week. And he’s 18 now, in  _college_  now, on the other side of the country. No one here knows he’s spent the last four years pretty much inside his own head. He doesn’t have to be who he was— _freak, fag, loser, creep, nerd_ —in DC. He can walk up to someone and talk without them knowing all the things the guys on the wrestling team wrote on his locker, or remembering the time he flipped out at Lilly Adams in the cafeteria, or any of the other things that pretty much destroyed his chances for normal human interaction back home.   
  
 _Fuck, Nathan_ , he thinks, letting the curse roll around in his head, savouring it,  _that’s why you’re here_.  
  
And even if this boy doesn’t like him, it’s still a first step. These things get easier the more you do them. At least, that’s what his mom always said.  
  
“Have you read  _Good Omens_?” he blurts down the table.  
  
The boy looks up, then looks around, like he’s trying to see if there’s someone behind him. “Sorry?”  
  
“ _Good Omens_ ,” he tries to smile and ignore the way his stomach is lurching. “Sorry, just, your book. I was wondering if you liked Neil Gaiman too.”  
  
The boy blinks at him. He’s got the kind of eyes, Nathan thinks, that would be really nice on a girl. Really full lips, too, and hair that’s almost down to his shoulders. He feels a pang of sympathy in his chest. High school must have sucked for this boy, too.   
  
“I liked  _Sandman_ , I guess, and  _Good Omens_.” The boy’s words come out slow, like he’s not used to conversation, and his hands are still fidgeting with the book, flipping a single page back and forth. “I’m not that into his other work.”  
  
“I know, right?” Under the table, Nathan wraps an arm around his pitching stomach, and rushes on before the boy can look back down. “He’s definitely a lot, I guess, flatter? Without pictures. Or Pratchett. His other work always seems kinda hollow. My name’s Nathan Harris, by the way.”  
  
“Spencer Reid. Um, Dr. Spencer Reid, actually.”  
  
“Seriously?” it comes out a little sharp, and Nathan and Spencer both flinch. “I guess that’s why I haven’t seen you at any of the frosh week events.”  
  
“Yeah.” Spencer ducks down into himself, shoulders coming up and hair obscuring his face. He’s picked up his fork now, but mostly seems to be using it to poke at a congealing scoop of mashed potatoes. “I was a freshman five years ago. I, um, have a PhD in engineering and I’m working on my second one now,” under his hair, Nathan can see him turning red. “If you subscribe to those terms, I guess you could say I’m kind of a genius?”   
  
“What kind of genius?” Nathan says, trying for a joke. Which doesn’t work, of course, because being funny is not something Nathan Harris has ever managed to pull off. Instead, Spencer just looks more uncomfortable and he wishes, just once, that he could figure out what it is other people talk about. “Sorry. I’m bothering you, aren’t I? I can let you finish reading.”  
  
For a moment, he’s sure Spencer’s going to tell him to leave him alone. That, or make a break for the door. Instead he shakes his head, puts down the fork and shifts a little in his chair, so they’re actually looking at each other.   
  
“I’ve read it before, actually,” Spencer says. Then, with a small, tentative smile that’s still half-obscured by his hair, “So what did you think of  _Good Omens_?”  
  
—   
  
For all that Nathan has a lot of interesting things to say about redemption in  _Good Omens_ and fantasy literature more generally—and doesn’t seem to mind when Spencer accidentally turns the discussion into a lecture on the history of the Antichrist versus the term’s appearance in scripture—Spencer doesn’t expect to ever see him again after the dining hall closes that night. Avery House doesn’t allow freshmen into its dining hall after Frosh Week, for one thing. And once classes start most undergrads have trouble finding time get to the dining halls in their own houses, never mind the far edge of the campus where the grad students live.  
  
Which is why he doesn’t pay much attention to the person who falls into step with him as he’s leaving the library a few days later. That, and the copy of _Communications in Contemporary Mathematics_  he’s trying to read while simultaneously juggling three other books and his laptop, and trying to pry open the building’s remarkably heavy front door.   
  
Which is why it shouldn’t be as embarrassing as it is when he flinches, yelps, and drops half the books as a voice right by his ear asks, “Do you really read that fast?”  
  
When he regains his composure enough to look over, Nathan’s giving him a sheepish smile, thin fingers twisting the sleeves of his sweater tight around his wrists. “Sorry. Do you need me to carry something?”  
  
Spencer looks down at his foot, where one of the books has come to rest, perfectly balanced, on the toe of his high top, and feels himself flush. “Maybe some help with the door?”   
  
“You didn’t answer my question,” Nathan says, as they’re walking back towards the dorm. Spencer wonders if he’s always this blunt in conversation, and if it works any better for him than his own bad habit of talking so far around things, or worse, lecturing about them, that he sometimes wonders if anyone knows what it is he’s talking about at all.  
  
“I’m not reading that quickly,” he starts, then backtracks when Nathan looks like he’s about to say something. “For me. I read a little faster when the typeface is larger. And I think I’m going to use some of it in my dissertation, so I’m trying to read everything twice.”  
  
“So that’s, what, a thousand words a minute?” Nathan’s eyes have gotten wide and Spencer feels like a specimen being prepared for study; stuck to a slide with another about to press down and seal him in.  
  
“More like 20,000,” he mumbles.  
  
“Oh.” Nathan pauses. “So does that mean I don’t have to feel bad about distracting you for the next hour, or that I have to feel ten thousand times worse?”  
  
“Actually, the average US citizen reads and comprehends between two hundred and fifty and three hundred words per minute, so it’s more like—” he pinches himself hard on the arm, just under the elbow, and hopes Nathan doesn’t notice. “Why do you need to distract me?”  
  
In response Nathan holds up a coil-bound notebook that looks like it’s seen better days, and is already leaking photocopied syllabi. “What do you know about physics?”  
  
Which is why, thirty minutes later, most of Spencer’s dorm-room floor is covered in pages of notes, a series of half-started calculations taking up most of a stack of post-it notes, and Nathan himself—who seems more interested in examining the contents of Spencer’s bookshelves than working. In fact, Nathan still hasn’t shown him the assignment he’s supposed to be helping with, and so far attempts to pick it out of the mess on his floor have proved unsuccessful.   
  
“You like Lovecraft, too?” Nathan sits up, holding a paperback. “ _The Rats in the Walls_  gave me nightmares when I was fourteen.”  
  
“My gym teacher couldn’t get me to go swimming for three weeks after I read  _The Shadow Over Innsmouth_ ,” Spencer says absently, sliding onto the floor and stretching out his legs as he leans back against his bed. “I’m not really fond of the idea of spontaneously growing-gills .”   
  
Nathan makes a soft noise that sounds like it might be a laugh, and Spencer feels a tight, warm stab of pride in his chest. “I’d rather have gills than deal with rats, though. Or tentacle monsters from beyond the stars, or crippling insanity, or—actually, gills seem pretty safe, for Lovecraft.”  
  
“I know,” Spencer nods. “It’s just, I was eleven years old the last time I took gym class. And I would rather be eaten last when the stars align and dread Cthulhu stirs in R’lyeh than ever have to go swimming with a bunch of high school students again.”  
  
And this time Nathan really does laugh, loud and sincere, and Spencer’s chest tightens to the point where it’s almost impossible to breathe.   
  
He never does find out what Nathan’s problem with his homework assignment was supposed to be.  
  
—   
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
It’s nearly 8:30 a.m. when Morgan looks up from his paperwork and morning coffee to see Reid slinking into the office, messenger back clutched tight to his chest, shoelaces flapping, shirt untucked, and hair sticking up even more than usual. When he sinks into his chair without even stopping at the coffee pot, Morgan can’t resist the urge to go over and seat himself on the edge of Reid’s desk.  
  
“So, what’s her name?”   
  
“What?” Reid asks, too busy turning on his computer and rummaging through his bag simultaneously to look up. He sounds half asleep, and maybe a little embarrassed, and Morgan doesn’t even try to fight down a grin.  
  
“Whoever’s keeping you so busy you didn’t even have a chance to tie your shoes.” He nudges Reid’s chair with one knee, trying for a rise. “What’s her name, man? Garcia’s going to need details.”  
  
There are a lot of reactions Morgan’s prepared for. A sarcastic comment, or a blush, or one of those awkward, utterly confused smiles that are Reid’s trademark in any non-profiling conversation. Maybe even an actual name, which would suit Morgan just fine—he’s willing to bet Reid could use the outlet. What he’s not expecting is a complete and utter lack of response he gets. Reid doesn’t even look up, just runs a hand over his face, takes a breath that’s deep enough to be audible, and keeps looking for god knows what in his bag.   
  
“Reid? You in there?” Still nothing, and Morgan can’t stop himself from learning in a little, looking a bit harder. There’s a brown, coffee-smelling stain bleeding up one of Reid’s sleeves, and the hand holding his bag up is turning white at the knuckles. “Come on, kid. Talk to me.”  
  
“Found it,” Reid says, as though he hasn’t heard Morgan at all, pulling a foil-wrapped chocolate and caramel Rice Krispies treat out of his bag.  _Type two diabetes waiting to happen_ , Morgan thinks, which is all the time it takes for half the thing to disappear into Reid’s mouth. “I’m fine, by the way” he adds, around a mouthful of marshmallow. “Is there any coffee left?”  
  
“Prentiss just made a fresh pot.” Reid crams the rest of the bar into his mouth, and Morgan leans in as close as he can without it getting too weird and lowers his voice. “If it’s about the nightmares... you know I’ll listen if you want to talk.”  
  
Reid swallows with what’s clearly monumental effort and fixes him with the all-too-familiar glare than means Morgan’s pushed too hard and backed him into a corner again. “It’s really not. And I’m going to get a coffee now.” Reid would never actually end a sentence with ‘so fuck off,’ but Morgan hears him loud and clear.  
  
“Better make it a quick one,” he calls after him, and when Reid spins back Morgan has to work to keep his eyebrows from rising all the way to his hairline. His cheeks are flushed and his shoulders are tense, and he looks like he might actually be trembling with rage.   
  
And Morgan has to fight the part of him that wants to let Reid lose it, wants to see him put down his shields and let the whole BAU take a hard look at the dark parts of his big, genius brain. The rest of Morgan reminds him that Reid is a co-worker, and interrogating co-workers violates the undiscussed but very real ban on intra-team profiling and probably isn’t that useful in the long- or short-term. Damage control, then. “J.J. wants us in the boardroom in five minutes. We’ve got a new case.”  
  
It’s like popping a balloon. Reid seems to shrink in on himself instantly, and only manages a small, tense nod before heading—running—for the coffee pot.  
  
All things considered, Morgan would definitely have preferred a chat about his sex life.   
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
September 1998**  
  
“What made you decide to come to CalTech?” Nathan asks as they’re lying in the grass one afternoon, in the small green space that separates the Industrial Relations Centre from Hill Avenue. Nathan’s never really seen himself as a lie-in-the-grass kind of guy before, but Pasadena is having a stupidly gorgeous fall, where going indoors seems like a sin. Besides, half of CalTech’s student population is out doing the same thing. It took he and Spencer almost twenty minutes of walking to find a semi-private place to sit and Nathan is going to enjoy his victory, dammit.  
  
Spencers shrugs—well, as much as he can with his arms behind his head—and looks at Nathan over one pointy elbow. “It’s too cold in New England.”  
  
“Why am I not surprised you got into Harvard?” Nathan sighs and stenches his arms over his head, feeling grass prickle the back of his hands. After two weeks of being friends (at least, he hopes that’s what they are) it’s hard to be surprised by just how many ridiculous and impressive things Spencer can do, or has already done.   
  
“I was talking about Yale, actually—but that was the same reason I didn’t want to go to MIT.” For once, Spencer doesn’t do the blush and shrink thing, and Nathan wonders if it’s because of the grass, their comfort levels with each other, or because Spencer is unaware that most people don’t get to turn down that many top-level universities in their lifetimes. “And CalTech had better housing services for 13 year-old geniuses who were technically too young to move to another state alone. And my mom thought the school crest was a nice colour.”  
  
“I don’t think mine ever mentioned it,” Nathan says, and Spencer snorts and rolls onto his side, leaning his cheek against one folded arm. “I was thinking about getting an English degree, originally. NYU said yes, and their creative writing thing is pretty good, so I guess that was my plan. Then Cal let me in off the waiting list and we stopped talking about me going anywhere else.”  
  
“You did want to come here, though, didn’t you?” Spencer says, sounding genuinely worried, which makes something in Nathan’s chest expand.  
  
“I guess,” now it’s his turn to shrug. “It’s a pretty good school, right?”  
  
“I guess,” Spencer agrees in that dry, serious way of his that Nathan is starting to realise is actually code for ‘I’m making a joke.’ There’s a lock of hair hanging in his eyes, and he exhales in a huff, trying to blow it away and succeeding in doing nothing at all. “And in a few years you can become the most overqualified Master of Fine Arts candidate in human history.”  
  
Nathan gives him a mock-glare of dubious success and reaches over, flicking Spencer’s hair out of the way for him. For all that Spencer never appears to have heard of hairbrushes, it’s surprisingly soft against his fingers.   
  
Then Spencer is looking at him in surprise, and it occurs to Nathan that he’s doing that thing again, where he ignores all of the things he’s learned to do to make himself seem normal and it blows up in his face. He lets his hand drop, darts his eyes to one side, stares out at the handful of cars in the IRC parking lot and almost completely misses the wide, delighted grin Spencer flashes him.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, and flicks Nathan on the centre of his forehead before rolling onto his back. “So, ah, does that cloud look like an  _ornithorhynchus anatinus_  to you, too?”   
  
—   
  
Spencer wraps the telephone cord around his fingers and tries not to get his hopes up as he counts off the rings. One, two, three—still another two, maybe two and a half, to go. Time enough for her to stretch out her hand, pick up the extension sitting next to her bed—  
  
There’s a metallic click on the line, and the hope he’s not supposed to let himself have sticks in his throat and chokes him. He pinches the bridge of his nose between his index and middle knuckles and listens to his own voice tell him  
  
 _Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail for Diana and Spencer Reid. Neither of us are available to take your call right now, but if you’ll please leave a message and your phone number after the tone, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible._  
  
It’s been five weeks since he left Las Vegas, and his mother still hasn’t taken any of his phone calls.  
  
“Hi, mom,” he tries to keep his voice upbeat. As if he thinks she’s just gone out to the store, or to a friend’s. As if she’ll call back. “Just calling to see how you are.”  
  
He knows she’s not ignoring him, exactly. He gets a letter from her at least three times a week—her latest turned up in his mailbox today. And he knows she’s listening to his messages because she sent him his copy of the  _Mabinogion_ , which he only asked for over the phone. He hopes she’s been deleting the messages too, because even in her most lucid moments, Diana Reid has never been one for changing the tape in their ancient, pre-digital-age answering machine.  
  
But, just in case, “You should probably change the tape in this, okay? I left more in the drawer just under the machine. And there are a couple in the kitchen, in the basket by the refrigerator. Just in case I need to leave you another message, okay?”  
  
He pauses, and he doesn’t know what he’s expecting. It’s not like the answering machine is going to talk to him, even though its name somewhat suggests it should.  
  
“Um, things here are good.” He twists the cord tighter in his fingers. “My friend Nathan—I wrote to you about him, remember? He found out about this interesting-sounding book store downtown, so I think we’re going to go there this weekend.  
  
“You—you can call me back, if you want, when you get this. My number’s in the letter I sent you. In all of them, so, if you have any of them with you... But it’s 555-2021 if you don’t have one of them around,” his voice cracks on the second syllable, and he has to clench his back teeth to keep it steady. “I miss you, mom. I’ll. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I love you.”  
  
The phone hits the cradle with a plastic-on-plastic crack, and Spencer puts his head down on his desk and tries to ignore the prickling he can feel just behind his eyes.   
  
—   
  
Nathan doesn’t know where Spencer got the wine from. But, based on a recent ingredient-by-ingredient dissection of their crust and a not inconsiderable rant about preservatives, Nathan’s fairly certain the pizza he’s holding didn’t come from Dominos.   
  
“I got them to put mushrooms on you half,” Spencer says, not quite hiding a grimace. “Happy, um, first major assignment... day.”  
  
And best friend or not, that pizza is the only reason Nathan lets him into his dorm room. Sleep isn’t something he’s well-acquainted with, but it turns out an essay-driven all nighter is a great cure for insomnia. He’s had at least twelve cups of coffee today, and even though his hands won’t stop shaking he barely made it through his evening class without falling asleep.  
  
“Did you get onions too?”  
  
“Yes,” Spencer says, with a faintly martyred air, setting the box on Nathan’s desk and pulling a corkscrew out of his bag. “Also on your half.”  
  
He cracks open the box, inhaling warm, tomato-scented steam. “I don’t understand how you can put jalapenos  _and_  broccoli on a pizza and object to onions.”  
  
“Broccoli has the structural integrity necessary to withstand cooking temperatures over seven hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” Spencer mutters, not looking up from the foil he’s peeling off the wine bottle. “And onions are slimy.”   
  
Nathan just snorts and snags a slice from his side. Pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms and onion—not a bad reward for 24 hours of work. “Do you need mugs? I think I have a couple from the dining hall I could wash.”  
  
“Actually,” Spencer reaches into his bag and produces a pair of glasses with a sheepish smile and a very slight blush. “According to most studies, the flavour of wine improves if it’s served in the correct stemware. Though, technically speaking, a Bordeaux glass would be more appropriate for a Merlot.”  
  
“Why do you even know this stuff?” Nathan asks, accepting a glass. He rolls the wine on his tongue and wonders, not for the first time, how something that tastes like grapes and hair spray got to be so popular.   
  
Spencer shrugs. “Graduate students go to a lot of cocktail parties. Cheers?”  
  
He doesn’t know when, exactly, he falls asleep. Some time after the second glass of wine, when the pizza is long gone, and Spencer is trying to explain the difference between a full house and a royal flush for the second time, while shuffling his deck of cards so quickly Nathan is having trouble following the movement of his hands. When he opens his eyes, it’s dark outside and it takes him a few minutes to figure out why he’s on the floor with the Jack of diamonds stuck to one cheek.   
  
There’s a blanket tucked around his shoulders, and Nathan’s tempted to curl up and continue his nap. But when he turns his head he sees Spencer’s bag lying on the floor next to him, and Spencer himself sitting a few feet away, leaning against his roommate’s bed. There’s a book Nathan can’t see the cover of spread out over his knees, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses are threatening to slide off his nose. A half empty wineglass dangles from his fingers, and when he takes another drink Nathan can see the purple stains on his teeth and lips.  
  
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he mumbles, and Spencer nearly spills the rest of his wine on himself in surprise.   
  
“Hi, sorry. I didn’t know you were awake.” His cheeks are red, and Nathan wonders if it’s from the alcohol, and if they’d feel hot if he touched him.   
  
“What time is it?”  
  
“A little after midnight,” Spencer downs the rest of his glass in one long swallow. “Sorry, I meant to leave earlier. You should probably go to bed.”  
  
“Mm,” he doesn’t so much climb onto the bed as slither, and it’s probably not the most graceful thing he’s done, but right now he’s too tired to care. “You can stay if you want. If my roommate’s not home yet he’s probably not going to be here tonight.”  
  
“No, I should get back.” He’s got his face pressed into the pillow, so he can’t see what Spencer’s doing. He feels something warm and heavy drop onto his shoulders a moment later—the blanket he left on the floor, he realises—then a different sort of warmth as Spencer’s fingers brush the back of his neck, pull away, come back, comb through his hair, then pull away for good. “Um, goodnight?”  
  
Nathan nods, mumbles something even he can’t decipher in response, and is dead to the world before Spencer makes it out the door.   
  
—   
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
Reid clicks the feeding mechanism of his mechanical pencil twice and tries to force himself to look up when J.J. opens the first slide of her presentation.  
  
A crime scene photo of a young blonde woman—maybe the same age as J.J. herself, maybe younger. Hard to tell from the angle. There’s a row of garbage cans behind her, trash on the ground blown around her like an audience, like rubberneckers at an accident. Her red dress is almost too bright against the washed-out grey of the concrete.   
  
The pencil sounds impossibly loud when he touches it to the page. He wonders how the team can hear anything over the scraping, tells himself to set it down, to pay attention. Sketches a jaw line instead—still thin and sharp, bones no broader or softer with age. A few new lines around the eyes and across the forehead. Cheekbones a bit less prominent than he’d remembered. That new close-cropped haircut. All those little signs of time, hard enough to catalogue in his head and harder still to get down on paper.  
  
“Prostitutes,” J.J. says, in the middle of some important phrase he’s utterly failed to hear. The pencil lead snaps, leaving a deep gray pockmark on the page. Reid looks up.  
  
“All three victims were found in the area near MacPherson Square,” another crime scene photo flickers across the screen, bringing more alleyways and trash cans and another female form lying spreadeagle on the ground. “All stabbed, all with their hair cut. DC police didn’t connect the murders until they found most recent victim this morning.”  
  
She clicks her handheld remote and the slide changes to an autopsy photo set side-by-side with a shot taken maybe three hours earlier. One woman he recognises from the earlier slides—a blonde Jane Doe, somehow looking more alone on a medical examiner’s table, with her ragged hair carefully pushed back off her face. The other victim’s hair is long, too, but black with a fringe of orange along the bottom that probably extended to her shoulders a few days ago. She’s younger, maybe a few years out of high school. Maybe not out of it at all.   
  
He catalogues the details, burning them into the part of his memory that holds all their case files and victims and nightmare fuel. Memorises the bruises on the blonde’s face, the squareness of the younger woman’s jaw. But even as he’s taking it all in, all he can see are the words.  
  
Filtered through the LCD projector, the messages on the victims’ stomachs look like they could be written in lipstick. Reid doesn’t have to squint to know they’re not, to know there’s no way to wipe those words off.   
  
On the blonde, in letters that look almost too neat to have been carved: HELP. The marks on the younger woman are harder to make out, until the slide changes again, giving him a closer view. FAILURE.  
  
The rest of J.J.’s explanation gets lost under the roaring in his ears.


	2. ACT II

**Pasadena, California  
October 1998**  
  
  
Lilly Adams is sitting in the centre of the cafeteria. Her usual table, where all the jocks and popular girls eat, right in everyone’s line of sight. Impossible to miss.   
  
She’s drinking strawberry flavoured water, lips wrapped around the small, stubby neck of the plastic bottle. She’s leaning in, towards the centre of the table, one arm wrapped around her chest, just under her breasts. Her t-shirt’s riding up her back, exposing smooth, tanned skin and at least four inches of purple, lace-topped thong.  
  
There’s a butterfly in the lace. Its wings flutter as she shifts, leaning closer to some varsity basketball player Nathan can’t even remember the name of.  
  
Nathan sits in the back corner, at the table closest to the door, in no one’s line of sight. No one but Lilly Adams’ lace butterfly, fluttering on her back. He puts a hand up to block it from his line of sight, then slowly crushes his fingers into a fist. Tiny wings beat against his palm and he rolls them in his fingers, mangling, tearing.   
  
When he unclenches his hand the butterfly is gone and his palm is sticky and red and he trails his fingers back over it in wonder, feels the warmth and liquid of it. And somewhere someone is screaming—just in his line of sight, if he’d only look—  
  
The alarm on his clock radio lets out a burst of static and half-tuned-in pop song, and Nathan sits up fast, heart beating in his ears. His fingers fumble over the dial, miss, land on the volume knob instead. Frantic bass beats pulse between the static. Nathan grips the clock hard and pulls, until the cord snaps away from the wall, until the last of the static fades into the air and all he can hear is his own ragged breathing.   
  
To his right something groans, and his heart tumbles over beats like its falling down a set of stairs.  
  
“The fuck?” Roommate, right. He has one of those. Right, right, right.  
  
“Sorry,” it comes out in a rasp. There’s no light coming from the window yet, no sounds of movement in the hall. Nathan looks at the dead clock in his hand and wonders what time it is. “Go back to sleep.”  
  
There’s another grumble from the bed, then silence. Nathan scrubs a hand over his face, then stops, looks down at his palms. Clean. No red, no blood.   
  
The disappointment nearly chokes him.  
  
—   
  
Ethan calls four days before Spencer’s birthday, on a patchy satellite line that must be costing him a fortune, to play him a full two minutes worth of ‘Happy Birthday’ on the harmonica, complete with a couple pretty impressive improvisational sections.   
  
“Where are you?” he asks, when Ethan finally comes up for air. “Still in Cambodia?” Ethan’s been working with Engineers Without Borders since he finished his doctorate. There have been occasional e-mails, but Spencer hasn’t actually spoken to him since he got on a plane headed for Southeast Asia last May.   
  
“Yeah. Looks like we’re nearly done with the filtration system, though. A couple of the guys here are thinking about hooking up with a project in Chile when we finish up. You doing anything next semester?”  
  
“Mathematics doctoral thesis?”  
  
“Right,” Ethan says with a mostly put-on sigh. “How is the old ivory tower?”  
  
“Fine,” he hesitates, then says in a rush, “I made a new friend.” It comes out sounding silly and childish and he fights the urge to blush, even though he’s alone. Sometimes he wishes Ethan were closer to his age, that the gap between 17 and 24 wasn’t quite so large.   
  
“Friend or  _friend_?”   
  
“Friend,” Spencer says, burying his face in his hands and blushing in earnest. “Don’t you have water to purify?”  
  
“Uh huh. Well, tell her to show you a good time on your actual birthday, got it? If I’m not there to keep you from working through it someone else better be doing it for me.”  
  
“You mean since you aren’t here to break federal liquor laws by serving Jack Daniels to a minor until he throws up in the school president’s flower bed?” Spencer says with a groan. There’s something about what Ethan’s just said that’s nagging at him. That pronoun. Her. Tell  _her_  to show you a good time. He should really correct him. “I’ll tell hi—tell them they have a lot to live up to.”  
  
—   
  
The phone rings once, twice, again. He taps out the rhythm against the side of the receiver, fingers loud against the plastic. And his eidetic memory may not extend to sounds, but Spencer knows the tone and shape of these rings as well as he knows Proust, or his home address, or anything he’s read for his dissertation.   
  
 _Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail for Diana and Spencer Reid. Neither of us are available to take your call right now, but if you’ll please leave a message—_  
  
He sets the phone back in the cradle without waiting for the tone.   
  
—   
  
The girl behind the cash register glances up at him and gives him a tight, fake, on-my-feet-all-day kind of smile. She’s wearing thick black eyeliner, cheap mascara. Her eyelashes stick together in clumps. She doesn’t look at his purchases as she scans and bags them. Doesn’t look at Nathan, either, which is a relief.   
  
He watches her hands as she picks up the items one by one. Long, sharp-looking nails click against a bottle of Coca-Cola, a Mars bar, two packs of gum. When she gets to the magazine he can’t help but glance up, but she’s still staring somewhere over his shoulder, like she hasn’t even noticed what she’s holding.  
  
He jerks his gaze back down and accidentally locks eyes with the blonde on the cover. She’s got her chin thrust up and her hands on her hips. There’s an X of electrical tape across each of her nipples that he can’t quite bring himself to look at. In the florescent convenience store lights, he’s sure he can see her eyes narrow, sure her face is shifting into a hard, predatory glare.   
  
Nathan flinches and presses his own short, bitten nails into his palms.   
  
And then the cash register beeps, flashes $5.99, and the blonde woman disappears into the same plastic bag as the gum.   
  
—   
  
 _Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail for Diana and Spencer Reid. Neither of us are available to take your call—_  
  
The line goes quiet for a moment, then, “Hello?”  
  
Spencer jerks up in his desk chair, fingers clutching at the receiver. “Mom? Hi—hello. Hello?”  
  
“Hello?” Her voice sounds the same as always. The precise, measured enunciation of an English professor, the soft rasp of a pack-a-day smoking habit abandoned over a decade ago. Just like he remembered. Relief floods through him, so fast and sudden he has to put his free hand on the edge of the desk to steady himself.  
  
“How’ve you—” he swallows, tries to rephrase. His mother hates passive constructions. “How are you?”  
  
There’s silence on the other end of the line. Too much silence. Too long. “Who is this? How did you get this number?”  
  
All the relief in Spencer’s veins turns sharp and painful. A chemical version of  _please, no_. “It’s me. Mom, it’s Spencer.” He doesn’t want to say it. Knows she’ll make him. “I’m your son.”  
  
Another long pause. His stomach twists in on itself, like it’s trying to crawl away. As though even his internal organs can’t stand to witness this.   
  
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, young man.” Her voice is hard now. Like the time he told her he didn’t want to skip fifth grade. Just like that, he tells himself, and clutches at the memory like he’s clutching the desk. Tries to remember the way her voice softened after. The way a lecture turned into _you’re a gifted young man, Spencer. I’m very proud of you._  He presses his eyes shut, trying to hear that instead of, “I know you’re watching me—I know what’s happening here.”  
  
“Mom,” he whispers, so low he doesn’t know if she hears him. “Please.”  
  
“I’m hanging up now,” she tells him. “And I’m unplugging the phone. So don’t try calling back.”  
  
The last thing he hears is the rattle of her beside phone against its base, just before the line goes dead.   
  
—   
  
Nathan stares at the ceiling and tries to pretend he can’t feel the blonde watching him through the mattress. It’s stupid, he knows. Stupid and probably crazy, especially when he already stabbed out her eyes with a ballpoint pen earlier this afternoon. Which isn’t less crazy, he thinks, and digs the heels of his hands into his own eyes, making patterns of light pop and flash across his closed lids.  
  
He could get out the magazine. He’s got scissors in his desk, pens in red and black and blue. A little arts and crafts time, and he could make sure she never stares at him or anyone again.   
  
Something thumps against his door and he sits up fast, without meaning to. He stares at the small stripe of light coming from the hall as he tries to calm his breathing and move his heart out of his throat and back into his chest where it belongs.   
  
The knock is soft, barely a brush of knuckles on wood. If he weren’t listening so intently, Nathan’s sure he wouldn’t hear it at all. His jeans are lying on the floor next to the bed and he pulls them on over his boxers before opening the door and edging his way out, so he’s standing with his back pressed against it and his chest almost touching Spencer’s.  
  
“Oh,” Spencer takes a quick step back, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”   
  
“No, my roommate’s just sleeping.” He scrubs a hand over his face anyway, trying to bring himself back to this. Here. Spencer and brightly lit hallways and California and—and Spencer looks... Off, somehow. Wrong. He’s doing something strange with his arms; pulled in like he wants to hug himself, but can’t quite stand the touch. “Are you okay?”  
  
Spencer smiles at him, big and blinding and fake. “Fine. Can I—” he looks at Nathan’s closed door and shakes his head. “Do you want to come for a walk?”   
  
And for some reason that makes him stop and look closer. At the hem of Spencer’s pants, wet like he’s been cutting across damp grass. At the circles under his eyes and the tight press of his lips. At the way his hands keep fluttering, like it’s too much effort to hold them still.   
  
“Just let me get my shoes?” he says, and Spencer nods like Nathan is offering him winning lottery numbers.  
  
His alarm clock reads 2:53 a.m. Nathan ties his shoes tight and swallows down a bubble of worry.  
  
They walk across the campus in silence. This late at night CalTech is almost deserted, though all the dorms they pass have at least a handful of lit windows. The air is thick and wet, and Nathan wishes he’d thought to bring a sweater. Next to him, Spencer rubs at his arms and tucks his chin against his chest, then steers them off the path onto the grass. Nathan has a sneaking suspicion he has no idea where he’s taking them, which Spencer pretty much confirms by leading him around the auditorium three times, then heading towards California Boulevard, where the campus peters out into an underground parking lot and the athletic centre he’s never bothered to visit.   
  
“Spencer?”   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
And there are a lot of things he should probably think to ask, but he settles for, “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No.” It comes out sighed and soft, and Nathan may be pretty bad with people, but he knows a ‘yes’ when he hears one.   
  
“Come on.” There’s a bench just outside the Physics building, close enough that he can pull Spencer over and sit him down without it feeling weird. They sit side by side, not looking at each other, while Nathan tries to figure out how grass in California can still look so green in the dark and Spencer does whatever it is he does when he’s stuck in his head.   
  
The silence stretches out again, and Nathan’s trying to work out just what he should say to make things better when Spencer pulls a knee up to his chest, turns and says, “My mother’s a paranoid schizophrenic.”   
  
His voice rises on the last word, like he’s asking a question, and it takes Nathan a moment to realise he isn’t joking. He’s still scrambling for a response that’s longer than one syllable when Spencer starts talking again, low and quiet and quick, like he’s trying to get everything out before he catches what he’s saying.   
  
“She was diagnosed before I was born, so I don’t remember her any other way. I guess she hasn’t ever really been well—if that’s the term you want to use—but normally if she stays on her medication she’s fine and I can be out here and know she’s eating and getting out of bed and even leaving the house sometimes.” He looks down at his hands, and Nathan wonders if he should be looking somewhere else too, if he’s not intruding on something private.   
  
“It’s not perfect—I am aware it’s strange to be looking after your own mother. But it’s been working, and. I guess I thought, if I did enough... I knew she wouldn’t get better. But at least she wouldn’t get worse?  
  
“Except. She won’t talk to me,” he swallows hard and swipes at his eyes, and this time Nathan does look away. “I called her tonight and she didn’t know who I was.”  
  
There’s a pause, and Nathan tries to fill it with some sort of encouraging noise, which comes out sounding more uncomfortable than anything. He’s actually relieved when Spencer ignores him altogether and continues to speak to his folded hands.   
  
“I know I shouldn’t be angry with her. It’s not as though she can tell her brain chemistry to change at will. But I,” his words come in a rush, now, and Nathan has to strain to hear him. “Sometimes I just hate this. Hate her. Hate how I can keep trying and trying and it’s not going to get better, and all I’ll have in the end is a mother who can’t tell me and her delusions apart.” He turns his head, puts his foot back on the ground. “Did you know the adult children of a mentally ill individual can petition the Nevada civil court for an involuntarily commitment? I looked it up years ago. I kept telling myself it didn’t matter. That I was just trying to find out everything I could and it wasn’t up for consideration.   
  
“Except,”he finally looks up at Nathan and smiles in a way that hurts to look at. “I turned eighteen three hours ago, and I think I’m considering it.”  
  
And for the first time in ages, it occurs to Nathan that—for all of his years of college and his doctorates and his inexplicable taste for wine—Spencer is his age. Younger. And the great, cosmic unfairness of everything makes his stomach clench. Because Spencer isn’t like anyone he’s ever met, and he doesn’t deserve to be sitting here, in the middle of the night, pouring out his soul to someone who can’t even think of two worthwhile words to say back.   
  
So he does the only thing he can think of, and reaches out. Puts an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, until their hips and knees bump and he can feel Spencer shivering against him. He’s half expecting Spencer to push him off, but all he does is let out a long, shaking breath before going limp against Nathan’s side.   
  
Which is probably the worst moment ever for him to blurt out, “Happy birthday, by the way.” But he’s so eager to have something to say that the words bypass his mental filter and splat out onto the pavement before he can stop himself. And Spencer is looking up at him in surprise, which Nathan is sure will to turn to disgust, or hurt, or anger—   
  
Or none of those things, because what Spencer actually does is lurch forward and kiss him.   
  
His lips are shut tight and his eyes shut even tighter. If he’d ever spent much time imagining his first kiss, it wouldn’t be the one he’d pictured because. Well. _Spencer_. Who’s still pressed tight against Nathan’s side, but keeps his hands folded against his chest even as he lets his mouth relax and kisses at Nathan’s lower lip.  
  
The weirdest thing about it all is how weird it isn’t.   
  
When he cups Spencer’s face with his hands, he can feel his pulse in his fingertips, fluttering fast. He catches his teeth on soft inner lip, and long fingers clutch at his shoulder as Spencer pushes his head forward and exhales into his mouth. He presses hard against the hinge of Spencer’s jaw in response, and is rewarded with a choked whimper that stabs him straight in the gut and another push of parted lips.   
  
Nathan pulls back for a breath of air and is shocked to discover how much he needs it. One breath is about all he gets, too, before Spencer pulls him back in so quickly his lips sting from impact and presses his bottom lip between Nathan’s. He bites down hard, hears another gut twisting moan, feels a flash of tongue against his teeth. And he’s always heard people’s mouths taste like something—toothpaste, or spice or something more particular—but Spencer doesn’t taste like anything at all.   
  
“Wait,” this time it’s Spencer who pulls away, but he presses his forehead against Nathan’s as he speaks. He still hasn’t opened his eyes, but he’s smiling a little and his mouth is spit-slick and swollen and shiny under the lights of the Physics Building. “Do you,” he swallows, licks his lips, “We could go back to my room?”  
  
For the first time tonight Nathan’s hoarse, one-syllable response feels like enough. “Yeah.”  
  
—  
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
Hotch gives them ten minutes to collect their things and meet in the car park. Reid grabs his bag one-handed as he passes his desk, ducks questioning looks from Morgan and Prentiss, and all but runs to Garcia’s office.   
  
“I need you to look up a name for me.” He shuts the door too hard behind him, sucks his lips in over his teeth and bites down, trying to keep his voice neutral. “Nathan Harris?”  
  
“That’s got to be an all-time FBI record for fastest background request,” Garcia says, fingers already flying, royal blue nails glinting in the half-light of her windowless, LCD-lit office. “Is he a police suspect, or are you developing superpowers?”  
  
“Neither.” He braces a hand on her desk chair and leans in, trying to ignore the look she gives him over the edge of her red cat’s-eye glasses. “He wouldn’t—I don’t think there would be a police record. Try university enrollment lists? Something local.”  
  
“Okay, my withholding boy wonder,” her fingers tap fast and hard, and Reid feels a small throb of pain stir in his temples. “Nathan Harris is a grad student at Georgetown, currently getting his master’s degree in abnormal psychology—” she breaks off as he chokes on nothing, and hands him an unopened bottle of water. “I’ll see what else I can find out and call you in the field?” There’s a slight hesitation before she says ‘you’ and Reid knows that’s not the only question she’s asking.  
  
“I’ll call you, okay? I need to check something first. Before I tell the team.” He twists the cap off the water bottle, forces his throat to swallow. “Can you find me a picture?”  
  
“Do you think he has Facebook?” she smiles at him, but her eyes are full of worry and, Reid thinks, just enough pity to make the water in his mouth turn sour. He looks away, studying a purple feather-topped pen standing at angle in an unused coffee mug. “Aha, jackpot.”  
  
Next to his hip, the fan starts turning in Garcia’s printer, and he can hear its feeding mechanism suck up a sheet of white paper. It spits it back out, face down, edge pressing into Reid’s expectant, trembling fingers. He folds it in half and jams it into his bag without looking.  
  
“Reid?” He turns to look at her, and it’s a mistake, because Nathan’s face is right there on the screen behind her, half smiling at him. Awkward, posed and grainy in the way only a DMV photograph can manage to be. His hair is a little longer here. Reid can see the dimple in his left cheek, the soft hint of shadows under his eyes, and it feels like someone’s just kicked him in the stomach.  
  
“I have to go,” his elbow bangs one of her monitors as he turns, sending a flare of pain up his arm. He doesn’t register the three steps it takes him to get to the door. “Just keep looking for anything strange. I’ll explain later. Thanks.”  
  
As he closes the door, Reid can see her lips move. But if she calls after him, he doesn’t hear it.  
  
—   
  
 **Washington DC  
November 2006**  
  
In the daylight, the crime scene doesn’t look particularly threatening. The alley is wide, well lit, even relatively clean. From the sidewalk you can see almost all the way to the back, with only a few dumpsters blocking the view. If you had to walk down a dark alley at night, Reid thinks, this would be the one you’d choose. Even now, if he looks away from the crime scene tape and handful of DC police, it’s hard to tell anything is out of the ordinary. Of course, that’s only because he hasn’t looked behind the trash bins yet.  
  
“She was trying to be so careful,” Prentiss says, voice quiet and hollow. She and Morgan head off fastest after the introductions, disappearing into the alley’s blind spot like they were never there.  
  
Reid turns back to K Street, scanning the crowd of passers by and loiterers, until he notices a thin blonde girl in a yellow miniskirt standing just inside the police tape, hugging her coat closed over her chest. He heads for her instead, trying to ignore a questioning stare from Gideon.  
  
“Hi, I’m Dr. Spencer Reid from the FBI?” she looks up at him and it’s clear she’s been crying. DC police said the victim, Holly Lidell, was sixteen years old. He wonders if her friend can be much older. “Did you, ah, work with Holly?”   
  
She nods and he fumbles the photo out of his bag, keeping the blank side turned towards him. “I was hoping you could tell me, have you ever seen this man around?”  
  
She wipes her nose against the back of her hand, sniffs again anyway, and leans in. Reid swallows and tries to force air into his lungs. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Gideon walking towards them, so quiet and unobtrusive he’d never notice if he hadn’t trained himself to watch for these things. “A few times,” the girl says, and Reid’s heart sinks. “He doesn’t try to buy. Just hangs around and pretends like he isn’t watching. We thought he was just trying to working up the nerve.”  
  
“Has he spoken to you or anyone else?” And he knew he was coming, but the sound of Gideon’s voice makes Reid flinch anyway.  
  
“I don’t think so. Always thought he was just going home after. Taking matters into his own hands.” She pulls her coat tighter, tries to smirk. Can’t. “Is he the one who did this?”  
  
“We don’t know yet,” Gideon says, gives Reid a look, then extends one hand. Reid folds the photo in half again, passes it over, and beats a hasty retreat to the back of the alley.   
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
October 1998**  
  
They stand just inside Spencer’s doorway and don’t look directly at each other. They haven’t touched at all since getting up off the bench, unless Nathan counts an accidental bump of hands on the way up the stairs that had both of them hugging their respective walls and staring at the floor.  
  
“Is it okay if I leave the lights on?” Spencer says, voice a little strained. “I get—I’m not very good with the dark.”  
  
He nods, licks at suddenly dry lips. “Yeah, cool. Do you want me to sit somewhere?”  
  
“Um,” Spencer says, and Nathan can see him sucking at his lower lip, brow furrowed. And then he’s looking up, catching Nathan’s eye and grabbing his hand and pulling him down, so they’re side by side on the edge of the bed. “Yes. Here.”  
  
His fingers are tight around Nathan’s, and when he leans in he’s got his eyes screwed shut again, as though they haven’t just kissed in the middle of the campus, where anyone could see.   
  
The kiss is slower this time, and for all that Spencer’s gripping his hand hard enough to hurt, his mouth is open and relaxed against Nathan’s, and he feels another soft swipe of tongue against his lips. He moves his mouth in return, trying to follow Spencer’s motions.   
  
They might only stay like that for a few minutes, or it might be more like half an hour. He loses track of time, until he feels a hand clutch at the back of his t-shirt and Spencer pulls at him, tugging him down onto his side, half-lying with his feet still spilling onto the floor. He moves in closer, until they’re pressed chest to chest, and when Spencer pulls his mouth away to run a hand over his face and push his hair out of his eyes Nathan hears his breath stutter in his throat.   
  
“Could I,” Spencer’s hand is on his stomach, fingers flexing. His thumb brushes the hem of Nathan’s shirt, and he’s nodding without knowing exactly what he’s agreeing to. Then there’s a hand sliding under fabric and over bare skin, and he inhales hard and pulls Spencer’s mouth back to his so fast their teeth click.   
  
Everything is speeding up. His t-shirt is shoved up under his armpits and Nathan sits up just enough so Spencer can help pull it over his head and leave a trail of open-mouthed kisses down his shoulder. He’s got his fingers hooked in Spencer’s waistband, keeping their hips pressed tight together, his other hand curled around a fistful of dark blond hair. He pushes a thigh between Spencer’s knees, and Spencer drops his forehead to Nathan’s shoulder, breath coming in short, hard gasps.   
  
He tilts his head so he can kiss the side of Spencer’s neck, over his pulse point, and Spencer shudders, fingers scrabbling at Nathan’s spine, looking for a handhold. He’s making these small, choked sounds now, Adam’s apple bobbing under Nathan’s lips. And when he bites at the skin stretched over Spencer’s collarbone, the noise turns into an actual moan, and Nathan feels dizzy with accomplishment.   
  
He doesn’t notice Spencer’s still wearing a shirt until it’s dangling off one wrist as he tries to undo the buttons at his cuff with his teeth, while his free hand works at Nathan’s zipper. They’re all the way on the bed now, legs tangled, pressing and pushing and making the blood roar in Nathan’s ears. Fingers slip on his fly, press down hard against his jeans and he bucks up, feels Spencer clutch at his hip and catch his mouth with his own.   
  
This is—God, Nathan can’t put the words together. Not what he’s imagined. Not this scuffed but tidy little dorm room. Not with his fly open but his pants still on. Not Spencer, still trailing his shirt, with his sweat-damp hair and blown pupils and a patchy red blush spreading down his chest as he pants into Nathan’s mouth. He scrapes his nails over Spencer’s stomach, feels muscle jump under his fingertips. Tries to stay in the moment. Here.   
  
“Oh,” Spencer whispers, tripping him up, pulling him back in. “Oh god.” He gets a leg around, behind Nathan’s, drops his head and chokes off what sounds like a sob. “Can’t,” he manages, voice cracked, and then he’s shuddering and gulping for air and Nathan has a brief, crystallised moment of panic before he feels Spencer’s hips jerk against his and—oh.  _Oh._  
  
“Good birthday present,” Spencer mumbles, after his eyes re-focus, as he pushes a hand down the front of Nathan’s jeans. He lets out a soft half-laugh, says it again. “Really good.”  
  
—   
  
 **Washington DC  
November 2006**  
  
Gideon motions him towards the SUV he and Hotch are taking to the morgue. It’s only a lift of his shoulder and a slight point with his chin, but Reid hears the command loud and clear.  _Mom and Dad want a family discussion_ , Elle would say. But Elle’s not here, and Reid has to do his own projecting as he slides into the back seat and folds his hands in his lap, trying not to fidget.   
  
Hotch pulls out of the alley, heads north. They drive the first six blocks in silence, and when Gideon finally pulls out the photo, the sound of rustling paper echos off the windows.   
  
“Why do you have a photograph of Nathan Harris in your bag?” Gideon says, almost absently, voice soft. Not so much the Good Cop as the friendly professor, settling in for a chat about an essay that’s not going well.  
  
In the rearview mirror, Reid can see Hotch’s eyebrow twitch up ever so slightly. As much of an expression of curiosity as they’ll get.  
  
“I saw him at the train station this morning,” he clears his throat, keeps his eyes fixed on a spot in the centre of the windshield. “He ran into me on the stairs. I don’t think I was supposed to see him, but I think he was looking for me.”   
  
Gideon doesn’t say anything, and Reid fights with the need to fill the silence.  
  
“I had Garcia do some checking before we left. He’s going to school in Georgetown. The commute from Quantico would be over an hour. Actually, most graduate students do live fairly far from the campus, but they tend to favour neighbourhoods north of DC, or in the city itself...” he trails off, clears his throat again.  
  
“Remember about two weeks ago I gave a lecture at Georgetown? On,” he can’t quite stop the laugh that bubbles out. “On sexual sadism and the Mill Creek killer. I didn’t see him there, but it was open to multiple faculties. There would have been posters—he would have seen my name. What I do now.”  
  
“The second victim wasn’t killed for another week,” Gideon says, voice giving away nothing. But if he’s even speaking, Reid knows he must see where this is going.  
  
“And this time the Unsub leaves a message—he wants us to help him stop. He wants to be caught. Maybe,” his voice catches and he grimaces at the windshield. “Maybe he’s asking because he’s found someone he knows he can reach out to.”  
  
“Do you genuinely think he could be our Unsub?” Gideon has the picture open in his lap, smoothing out the crease. Reid steals another glance at it. This time his stomach mostly stays where it belongs. If he keeps looking, maybe the image will stop meaning anything at all.  
  
“I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair, lets his gaze drift to the side window. “Maybe. I don’t know.”  
  
“Reid,” Hotch says, eyes still on the road, hands never leaving two and ten o’clock on the steering wheel. “Who is Nathan Harris?”  
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
October 1998**  
  
They lie on the bed afterwards, facing each other, knees touching. Spencer’s eyes are closed, the press of his fingers as they circle Nathan’s elbow the only sign he’s still awake. There’s a bruise blooming on his neck, just above his shoulder, more marks a few inches below that. Nathan watches the imprints of his teeth appear, like the image in a Polaroid, and wonders if it’s normal to find that sort of thing hot.   
  
“Nathan?” Spencer’s brows knit together, eyes still resolutely shut. “Are you still going to want to talk to me tomorrow?”  
  
And it’s such a stupid, stupid question that Nathan finds himself at a loss for words again. He settles for pressing his thumb into the bruise on Spencer’s collarbone instead, for leaning in and sliding his lips over purpling skin. “Don’t be an idiot.”  
  
“Right,” it comes out shaky, and he can feel Spencer’s fingers spasm against his arm. He presses harder, feels a knee jerk against his, lets his own eyes drift shut as he moves his fingers in small, hard circles, massaging the mark into skin, making it stick. The mattress dips as Spencer slides closer, head tipping forward until Nathan can feel the brush of his hair against his chin.   
  
“I, um,” Nathan feels a hand press against his side, hears the breath stick in Spencer’s throat. “I didn’t think you would. Would want. Ow.” The last word is hissed, but Spencer presses his head forward anyway, stretching out his neck.   
  
“Still being an idiot,” Nathan says, and his voice sounds sleepy and heavy to his ear, but he pushes forward into Spencer anyway, rolling their faces together, touching foreheads, then noses, then lips. Warm fingers clutch at his back in a way that already feels oddly familiar. And he should really go back to his own room, his own bed, but he shifts forward again instead, until they’re chest to chest.  
  
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when Spencer starts speaking again he falls back into himself with a jolt and his brain garbles the first few sentences completely.   
  
“Need to go home,” is the first thing he actually catches.  
  
“Right now?”   
  
Spencer starts against him, like he didn’t think he had an audience. “Hey—no. Just, maybe soon. If she doesn’t,” he swallows and Nathan feels him curl closer. “If my mom doesn’t start. Just... soon.”  
  
“It’ll be okay,” Nathan tells him, as though the threads of this conversation aren’t scattered and tangled in his brain, to the point where he can barely remember what set this whole thing off. As though he’s not drifting out again even as his hand slides from Spencer’s neck to his shoulder, rubbing circles.   
  
“Are you staying?” Spencer blurts, and Nathan likes his way of diffusing awkward moments. “I know you have class, but you might have time to finish at least one REM cycle before then if you do.”   
  
“Hm,” he nods, lets his arm turn to dead weight against Spencer’s side. Feels an open mouthed kiss pressed against his jaw and hopes to hell that tonight he won’t dream about anything at all.


	3. ACT III

**Pasadena, California  
October 1998**  
  
“Wait, wait, hold on,” Nathan says, sitting up so quickly he almost elbows Spencer in the stomach. “They can’t kill Spock. That doesn’t even make sense.”  
  
Spencer stretches his arms over his head, feeling his spine bow away from the back of the couch, and tries not to smirk too much. “Well, logically—” Nathan whacks him with an empty videocassette box when he starts snickering. “Alright, alright. Just look the title of the next film.”  
  
Nathan scrounges around on the table, until he comes up with the box for  _Search for Spock_ , then gives him the dirtiest look he can manage. “You tricked me.”  
  
“Technically, screenwriter Jack B. Sowards tricked you. I’m just,” he coughs to mask another snicker—holding a straight face isn’t really his strong suit tonight, “participating in the narrative. Also, you should note the title says nothing about finding him.”  
  
“You suck,” Nathan says, grabbing him by the waist and tugging at him until they both fall over, sprawled out across the couch. “You  _and_  screenwriter Jack B. Sowards.”  
  
“Does that mean you don’t want to watch the third movie?” Spencer asks innocently, resting his chin on Nathan’s shoulder. His heart feels like it’s going three times faster than normal, and he hopes it doesn’t show. Being this close, it’s still strange. That they’re in a common room with an unlocked door doesn’t help either.   
  
“Course not,” Nathan says, and slides a hand up the back of Spencer’s shirt like it’s something he does all the time, voice only hitching a little. “It’s shark week this week. We’ll never get the common room back. Just let me rewind this one first.” Spencer feels him lean to the side for the remote, then hears the soft whir of spooling videotape. Wonders how many people have made out on this particular couch over the years, then tries not to be scandalised by his not very scientific estimations. Wonders if he should add to the number, then tries not to be scandalised by himself.   
  
“Is this the one with the space whales, too?” Nathan asks, breaking Spencer’s concentration by smoothing his fingers up his spine.   
  
“Actually, the whales are standard Earth humpbacks. It’ll make sense when we get to the fourth film.” He licks his lips, listens for sounds from the hallway, then presses a quick kiss to Nathan’s neck. “Who’s your favourite of the bridge crew so far?”  
  
Nathan sighs and tilts his head back. “Um, Spock so far, I think. Everything being logical sounds, I don’t know, nice. And the nerve pinch is pretty awesome. You?”  
  
“I always liked Chekov,” he kisses Nathan’s neck again, just under his jaw. “It’s difficult to tell in the films, but he’s approximately a decade younger than everyone else on the bridge. It was a bit more obvious during the original series, when his character was in his early twenties, while everyone else was over thirty.”   
  
“Why am I not surprised you like the prodigy?”  
  
“So maybe I relate. A little.” He pushes himself up onto his elbows, so he’s staring down into Nathan’s face. And there’s still no sound from the hallway so maybe it would be alright—even appropriate, if his theories about the couch are correct—to kiss him.   
  
He really doesn’t mean to do much more than press their lips together for a couple seconds. But then Nathan’s got a hand in his hair and his mouth open under his and it gets longer. Messier. When he finally pulls back, it’s with a shudder and a swelling lower lip. Nathan’s eyes are glazed, and he’s grinning like a loon.  
  
“So, next film?” he says, and scrapes his nails down Spencer’s back, just hard enough to make him arch and groan.  
  
“You suck,” he grumbles into Nathan’s neck, trying to ignore the way his arms shake when he pushes himself away and upright.  
  
“Yeah,” Nathan says, reaching for the video again. “Me, you, and screenwriter Jack B. Sowards.” He gives Spencer another ridiculous smile, kisses him on the cheek, then gets up to slip  _Star Trek III_  into the VCR.   
  
Spencer tries not to smile back, and fails miserably.   
  
—   
  
 **Washington DC  
November 2006**  
  
Garcia picks up on the first ring. “Holy chequered past, Boy Wonder.”   
  
Reid winces and prays the nickname won’t stick. Morgan calling him ‘kid’ and ‘boy’ is bad enough. He doesn’t need the rest of the team getting ideas. “Sorry?”  
  
“Turns out there’s a little more to your not-a-suspect than meets the eye. Though I get the feeling you’re not going to be all that surprised by the news,” her voice raises at the end of the sentence. Reid can practically hear her arching an eyebrow on the other end of the line.  
  
“Yeah?” He rubs at his temples, tries to fake curiosity. The throbbing in his head feels worse than it has all morning. Caffeine withdrawal. Right. “What’d you find?”  
  
“I checked his medical records like you said to—which is still illegal, in case you’re keeping score—and it appears our young Mr. Harris spent his early twenties in a series of mental health treatment facilities in the DC area.”  
  
“Getting treatment for what,” it doesn’t come out sounding like a question. Reid closes his eyes, leans back and lets his head hit the side of the SUV with a thump. In a few minutes Hotch and Gideon will finish up with the medical examiner and join him back here. He should have waited, had this conversation on speaker phone, let someone else ask the questions.   
  
“Spencer Reid, if you’re not even going to pretend to be interested—”  
  
“Homicidal fantasies, right? Sexual sadism?” He opens his eyes to see Hotch stride into the parking lot, Gideon half a step behind him.   
  
“That, and a pretty severe case of depression, by the looks of it. I’ll keep sifting through things, but fair warning, I’m willing to plug a USB cable into your head, Matrix-style, if that’s a more efficient way to get answers.”  
  
He ignores that in favour of watching the other agents draw closer, and wonders if he’ll be able to look Hotch in the eye when he gets close enough for that to be possible. “How long ago was his last stay?”  
  
“Last long term stay ended in August 2001,” Garcia says. “Though it looks like he spent a few weeks back in care in March of ’02. Not exactly the spring break getaway you see in the movies, is it?”  
  
And there are more questions he should ask, more information he should offer. But the only other thing he can think to say, as Hotch and Gideon come to a stop in front of him and his pulse kicks into overdrive is, “Do we have a current address?”   
  
—  
  
 **Las Vegas, Nevada  
November 1998**  
  
Looking at the brochure, you’d never be able to tell the Bennington Sanatorium was located anywhere in Nevada, let alone a half hour bus ride away from the Las Vegas Strip. Sprawling green lawns and Japanese maples spread out on all sides of the otherwise unremarkable white building.   
  
A testament to 127 years of sprinkler technology, Spencer thinks. That, and the city’s never ending desire to resemble anything other than Clark County’s desert floor.   
  
A cough in front of him, and he looks up to see Dr. Norman staring at him. He rolls the brochure into a tube, shoves it into a pocket and tries to pretend he’s been listening.  
  
“This is one of our common rooms,” Norman says, as though Spencer hasn’t been standing here daydreaming. Maybe he hasn’t noticed. Maybe the kindness is just another part of the sales pitch. “If you want to follow me in?”  
  
The room reminds him of a student lounge. Flower patterned couches worn down just enough to look inviting, wood panelling on the walls. A few patients—residents, he reminds himself—sit near the window, reading or staring into middle distance. Not a bad space, if he ignores the buzz of the fluorescent lights, or the hospital smell of disinfectant.   
  
 _She might not hate it here_ , he thinks, then digs his fingernails into his palms to keep that line of thought from going any further.   
  
“Most of our residents spend at least a few hours a day here,” Dr. Norman is saying. “We try to encourage positive social interaction as much as possible…”  
  
Spencer nods and lets him get through his prepared explanation before wandering towards the window. The sales pitch doesn’t change much from place to place. From here they’ll move to the dining room, and he’ll hear a prewritten paragraph on Bennington’s nutritional regimen. From there, maybe a tour of the grounds. Then, eventually, back to Norman’s office for the big talk. Terms of stay. Finances.   
  
Been there, done that. Four times in the last three days. The glamour of choosing a long-term care facility is definitely wearing off, Spencer thinks, and fails to keep a grim smile from slipping onto his face.   
  
Below him, Bennington’s grass is still the sonic green of summer, hardly touched by three months of fall. He imagines his mother sitting in the faded brown armchair to his right, a book open on her lap, staring down at the same green. Imagines, and feels something rise in his throat to choke him.   
  
He pulls the pamphlet out of his pocket, smoothing it on his thigh. Stares at the photo of the perfectly groomed, perfectly generic building on the front. Tells himself  _she might not hate it here_ , until he almost believes it, and lets the brochure roll in on itself on his open palm.   
  
“Dr. Norman? I’m ready to see the rest of the facilities.”   
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
November 1998**  
  
Extra large pizzas weren’t meant to be carried one-handed, Nathan thinks with a wince as he jiggles the box, trying to keep the hottest parts of the cardboard away from the inside of his arm. He raps on the door with his free hand, then shifts the box away from sensitive skin, holding it out in front of him. Plasters on his best excited smile, and waits.  
  
No response.  
  
He tries balancing the box on his hip this time, where the denim can soak up some of the heat. Another knock, longer this time. And still not so much as a sound of movement from inside the room. Shit.  
  
“Spencer?” He hits the door with his knee this time, feels it shake in its frame. “Spencer, it’s me.”  
  
He’s in there, Nathan knows he is. He was there when Spencer booked his plane ticket to Las Vegas in the first place. He knows when Spencer was due back at school—and more importantly, he knows Spencer would get in touch if the airline delayed his flight by three days.   
  
He gives the door another shove and wonders what Spencer’s dorm mates think of him, standing out here shouting at nothing. He can feel heat creeping into his cheeks, and under any other circumstances he’d call the whole thing off and flee back to his own room.   
  
Then again, under normal circumstances Spencer would have left his room some time in the last 72 hours, and Nathan wouldn’t have spent the last three days hanging around outside the Avery House dining hall, hoping he’d at least come down for a meal. Under normal circumstances, calling Spencer’s dorm room would result in more than a busy signal. Under normal circumstances, he’d be inside by now, tearing into his second slice of pizza.  
  
He shifts the box back to his arm. The cardboard’s already gone from hot to pleasantly warm. “Spencer,” he knocks harder, raising his voice to shout over his own noise. “Spencer, please.”  
  
The door opens about an inch. Nathan goes still, waiting.   
  
“Nathan?” Spencer’s so quiet Nathan can barely hear him.  
  
“Hey,” he tries for cheery, but it comes out more like a relieved sigh with words attached. “Can I come in?”  
  
A long pause, then, “I don’t really feel like talking right now.” And Nathan can’t see his face, but Spencer sounds so wrecked he doesn’t think he needs to.   
  
“I brought dinner.” He pushes his knee against the door again, half surprised Spencer isn’t braced against the other side to keep him out. “And half of this pizza is covered in weird stuff, so you have to eat it.”  
  
The room is dark, curtains drawn to keep out the glow of the streetlights. In the light from the hall he can just make out Spencer, still mostly hidden by the door, face turned towards the wall. Nathan closes his eyes for a moment, trying to adjust, then kicks the door shut behind him. Fumbles his way to the desk and sets the pizza down on a stack of hardcover books. Behind him, there’s a soft sigh and the familiar sound of Spencer tipping backwards to lean against the wall.   
  
“Come on,” he tries to smile, even though no one can see it. “It’s getting cold.”  
  
He expects an argument. Instead, he gets another sigh, and feels Spencer brush past him in the dark to sit on the edge of the bed.  
  
They eat four slices each in silence, sitting next to each other, but far enough apart that Nathan can’t even feel Spencer’s body heat. “You want any more?” Nathan says, and his voice sounds disembodied, like he’s projecting it in from another room.   
  
“No. Thanks.”  
  
And after that there’s nothing but another minute of tense, absolute silence, until Nathan can’t stop himself and says, “It’s not your fault, you know.”  
  
“Don’t,” Spencer snaps.   
  
Nathan closes his mouth so fast his back teeth click together. Settles for staring at the faint outline of his hands instead. He’s imagined this conversation a few times, and in his head it was more like that night outside the physics building, with Spencer wrung out and sitting too close. It never occurred to him to play out a scenario like this. Cut off, closed, cold.   
  
He wrings his hands together between his knees. Picks at the inseam of his jeans. Drums out a jittery beat on his thigh. Next to him, Spencer is so still Nathan can barely tell he’s there.   
  
Of course, he’s the first one to break the silence. Again. “I thought you didn’t like the dark.”   
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Can I turn on a light?” No reply, so he leans over to hit the switch on the desk lamp. Spencer grimaces, screws his eyes shut and, shit, just the sight of him, it slams into Nathan like a blow to the chest. Relief, and something he’s not sure he’s ready to put a name to. It’s good to see him again.   
  
“Hey,” he says. And when Spencer turns, squinting in the light, he leans in without thinking, reaches up to cup his jaw and hold him in place.  
  
Spencer doesn’t quite flinch, but he pulls back fast enough to keep Nathan from doing more than bumping his fingers against his chin. Now that his eyes have adjusted his face is blank and stiff, and it’s not fair. He doesn’t have to be here. The least Spencer could do is pretend to be even a little grateful that someone cares if he starves alone in the dark.  
  
“Fuck,” he says, and when he can’t think of anything to add he settles for saying it again. “Fuck, Spencer.”  
  
“Nobody asked you to come over. So don’t feel as though you have to stick around on my account,” Spencer says, voice clipped and fast, turning to stare at the wall opposite the bed, like Nathan’s not even worth acknowledging.   
  
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were going to take out your guilt about your psycho mom on me.”  
  
Spencer goes pale and whips his head around to stare at him, and Nathan actually didn’t think the temperature in the room could get any lower than it already had. He braces himself for the explosion, but it doesn’t come. Nothing comes. Nothing but more silence and Spencer’s blank, glassy stare.   
  
He should go. But Spencer’s staring at him like—like, he doesn’t even know what it’s like, but it’s got him frozen.  
  
And then, so out of nowhere that Nathan actually jumps, he laughs. At least, the wet, harsh noise he makes sounds like it’s supposed to be a laugh. He wraps his arms around his stomach, leans forward like he’s going to be sick.   
  
Nathan shouldn’t be relieved. But this, at least, feels like familiar territory. “Spencer, I’m sorry—”  
  
“Please just shut up.” Spencer’s bent so far forward he’s practically got his head between his knees. And all the anger that was just starting to diffuse in Nathan snaps back into form.  
  
“If you’re trying to kick me out, just say so.”   
  
Spencer shrugs, eyes still fixed on the floor. And this silence. Is just—he can’t take this. Can’t take another fucking second of quiet. His fingers dig into the soft space just below Spencer’s shoulder joint, and when he pulls him back towards him Nathan hears a soft grunt of pain. “Look at me. Tell me what you want.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Spencer’s eyes keep meeting his, then flicking away. He hauls in a long, heavy breath, like he’s going to say something, then shakes his head.  
  
“Do you want me to go?” He’s getting the feeling he already knows the answer, but the pissed off part of him wants to make Spencer say it out loud.   
  
“I just don’t think you want to be the only person I care about who isn’t missing in action or—or psycho.” He’s glaring now, right back at Nathan, even as he falters over the words. “I’m trying to let you opt out. Happy?”  
  
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”  
  
Spencer actually scowls at him. “Constructive criticism, thanks.”  
  
“So, just to be clear, that’s a ‘no’ on the whole wanting me to go thing, right?” All this getting angry is starting to give him this weird adrenaline rush. Except instead of wanting to punch something, he feels like he could burst out laughing any second. He settles for leaning over until his side bumps against Spencer’s.   
  
“Nathan, seriously.” Spencer frowns and reaches up to rub at his shoulder. “I don’t think I’m a good person to know. I have this effect.”  
  
“Since when do you believe in curses?” he has to bite back a grin this time. This is all going to go to hell again if he can’t keep a straight face—and, wait, wasn’t he furious a couple seconds ago?  
  
Spencer turns pink and stops trying to make eye contact altogether. “I don’t. I just,” he hesitates, and shrugs again. “The entire time I was home, I was sure I wasn’t going to do it. That I’d figure out something else before it got that far. Or she’d get better. Or, I don’t know, someone would find a cure for schizophrenia and the whole thing would be irrelevant. And then there I was, standing in our living room, trying to come up with a way to politely introduce the men in white coats.”  
  
“So?” He sets his hand over Spencer’s, where it’s lying on the bed, threading their fingers together.  
  
“So, it’s not the sort of experience than makes one think, ‘yes I should be spending more time with members of the human race.’” And the way he says it, still so stiff and sad, makes Nathan want to give the whole reassurance thing another try. Except that would probably get his head bitten off, so he settles for shifting closer on the bed.  
  
“You know you’re my only friend, right? And when you’re not around I spend like all my time reading graphic novels and typing random things into search engines? If you don’t deserve that, you might want to consider killing yourself.” Next to him, he thinks he sees Spencer’s mouth twitch up at the corners.   
  
“Did you ever try typing ‘death’ into a search engine?”   
  
“All the time. It really confused Ask Jeeves.” This time he lets himself grin, and bumps their shoulders together again. “Are you letting me stay or not?”   
  
“Do I have a choice?” Spencer asks, but he squeezes Nathan’s hand and elbows him back when he says it.  
  
—   
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
There’s something about cases like this that bothers Emily Prentiss. Cases with girls— _young women_ , she tries to call them women, but even in her head it always slides back to  _girls_ —teenage girls, sixteen year-old girls.   
  
She can imagine Holly Lidell, still alive, looking for johns on K Street. A runaway, maybe. Or kicked out. Not that there’s much difference between the two, sometimes. She can imagine her before that, too. A highschool sophomore sharing chemistry notes with her friends, or smoking under the bleachers instead of going to home room.  
  
What she can’t imagine is looking at Holly Lidell and seeing a threat, a predator, an infection. Anything other than a sixteen year-old girl who didn’t deserve her death any more than any of the other victims she sees every day.   
  
It shouldn’t be worse when the victim is someone like Holly. Shouldn’t, but always is.  
  
“Prentiss?” Morgan says, an edge in his voice like he’s said it already, more than once. She blinks hard and frowns at the SUV’s glove compartment, wondering just how long she’s been staring at nothing.  
  
“Yeah?” She tries to keep her voice light, like he’s caught her daydreaming.   
  
“You think Garcia’s in a caramel macchiato mood, or a java chip frappuccino mood?” he matches her tone, the little wrinkle between his eyes the only indication he’s noticed something off. He won’t call her on it, she’s sure. He never pushes at her boundaries when there’s nothing to gain. It’s one of the things she’s always liked about Morgan.  
  
“Java chip?” She smiles and shrugs and Morgan gives her a knowing grin. When they get to Starbucks to make the team coffee run they’ll both be ordering dark roast, no cream, no sugar. “Get the caramel one for Reid,” she suggests. “That has to be enough sugar for him.”  
  
“Mm,” Morgan nods and steers the SUV out of traffic and into the coffee shop parking lot. “You notice anything off about him this morning?”  
  
“Other than him showing up late, wearing his morning coffee?” She walks towards the building a little faster than she needs to, half a step ahead of Morgan. When she gets a hand on the door before him and shoves it open it’s the stupidest, silliest, best kind of victory. “Not really. What’s up?”  
  
“He seemed a little tense, is all. Nothing major,” now it’s Morgan’s turn to shrug, before turning to the barista behind the counter to reel off their page-long list of drink requirements.   
  
Emily cocks one hip against the counter and tries to keep herself from guessing what Holly Lidell’s Starbucks order would have been.  
  
She’s not the only one on the team with a thing, she knows that. She’s seen how Hotch and Morgan react when their cases involve children. Accompanying Gideon to Guantánamo Bay was like being given a diagram with all his buttons and triggers labelled. Even J.J. seems to have trouble of letting go of some of the cases they work in smaller towns.   
  
None of which makes her feel any less like she’s wallowing, wasting time. Later, she tells herself, when they’ve found the Unsub, she can go back to her apartment and order in some Thai and wonder what Holly Lidell really wanted to be when she grew up for as long as she wants. Right now, Morgan’s going to need some help carrying seven coffees back to the SUV. And then they’ve got a profile to build.  
  
—   
  
Hotch’s door is closed.  
  
They’ve been back ten minutes already. By now they should be in the briefing room, throwing out ideas, trying to fit inside the Unsub’s head. Even Gideon’s out in the bullpen, hovering by the filing cabinets, as though they’ll disguise his impatience. Her coffee’s already gone from just right to lukewarm, and when she touches Hotch’s unclaimed cup there’s almost no warmth left in the cardboard.   
  
She spins her chair just enough to get a view of the rest of the room. Morgan’s staring into space, twirling a pencil between his fingers. JJ’s sitting on the wrong side of her desk, the only place in her office with a clear line of sight to Hotch’s. Only Reid seems busy. If slamming back a venti Starbucks coffee and three more mugs from the office machine counts as ‘busy,’ that is.   
  
When the door finally opens, Prentiss is sure Hotch is going to order them back to the SUVs. Another victim, it has to be that. The brunette woman in a Capitol Hill-regulation suit who comes out instead is unexpected, to say the least.   
  
Prentiss remembers the name before she’s halfway to her desk. She’s an ambassador’s daughter. She can still name most of the members of the Saudi Arabian Council of Ministers, circa 1984, and speak enough German to get by at parties and state dinners. A former member of her mother’s own staff is no challenge at all.   
  
“Congresswoman Steyer,” she’s ready for a handshake, but Steyer goes in for a hug instead.   
  
“Emily, so good to see you.” She sounds genuine, but then she’d have to be good at that. “How is your mother?”  
  
Behind her, Hotch clears his throat. Thank God. “Agent Prentiss, I need you in the briefing room.” His voice sounds like ice, but dealing with a pissed off Aaron Hotchner is still better than standing here, figuring out what to say about Ambassador Prentiss to make it sound as though they’ve spoken in the last month.   
  
—   
  
Garcia’s sitting in the corner of the briefing room when they file in. Strange, but no stranger than anything else that’s happened since she got back to Quantico today.  
  
“What do we know so far?” Hotch asks, and Prentiss wonders if he’s staring at Reid and Gideon so he can avoid looking at her.   
  
“He waited three months after the first kill, and when he couldn’t stop himself he asked for help,” Hotch may not like her, but she’ll be damned if he can ever say she doesn’t do her part on the team.  
  
“Right,” Morgan jumps in, “those hesitation marks—this guy isn’t sure he wants to do this. And when DC police didn’t stop him, we get ‘failure.’”  
  
“He’s cutting the hair, but not taking it,” Reid says, speaking more to his coffee mug than anything else. “It probably makes them seem less feminine, less dangerous. And he’s killing in the morning—”  
  
“When he’s less likely to think they’re on the prowl,” Morgan nods. “He couldn’t do it at night, they’d seem too powerful. And if he’s stabbing them he’s probably impotent.”  
  
“Which would make him feel even more powerless,” she adds.  
  
“He probably works on or around Capitol Hill,” Reid says. And Prentiss is about to ask him what he thinks the Unsub’s personal life is like when he braces a hand on the table and shoves himself backwards. He only moves a couple inches, but the sound of chair legs on linoleum is enough to make everyone stop. “It fits. We should just tell them.”  
  
Morgan’s leaning across the table before Emily’s had time to close her mouth. “Tell us what?”  
  
Prentiss looks at Gideon, but Gideon’s looking at Hotch.  
  
“We may have a suspect.”  
  
She, JJ and Morgan are the only ones to react. “Okay,” Morgan says, trying and failing to choke all the anger out of his voice. “You wanna fill the rest of us in on what the hell’s going on?”  
  
“His name is Nathan Harris,” Gideon says, sliding a creased piece of paper across the table. The photo shows a thin young man with an awkward smile and tired eyes. Probably about Reid’s age, and not that far off in build, from what she can see. “He’s a graduate student at Georgetown.”  
  
“And he’s our suspect why?” Morgan asks, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. If he wore glasses, Prentiss thinks, he’d be glaring over the top of the frames right now.   
  
“Nathan,” Reid starts, then seems to think about it and tries again. “Over the last eight years Harris has been in and out of three different institutions in the DC area. Each time because of sexually sadistic impulses he didn’t think he could control. Prostitutes in the K Street area say he shows up there every few weeks, but doesn’t do more than watch them work.”   
  
“That would work with the profile, but where did we get him from?” Reid frowns and stares at the table top again, and Prentiss almost feels guilty for asking. “None of our interview subjects mentioned anyone suspicious by name, or had enough information to get us this far. Who did you talk to?”  
  
“We didn’t talk to anyone. I—” he falters, sucks in a breath, then snaps his head up. And if he were anywhere other than a room full of profilers, no one would notice the way he’s staring at the wall instead of making eye contact. “I saw him at the metro station this morning. Those messages, I think he’s trying to contact me.”  
  
“Because of your Georgetown lecture?” JJ asks, abandoning her spot by the laptop and LCD projector and sliding into a chair at the table. “Was he in the class you spoke to?”  
  
“Not exactly. Nathan—Harris and I went to CalTech together, before he was hospitalised.” Another deep breath. “We used to date.”   
  
Next to her, Prentiss feels Morgan go still. When she glances over, his face is as blank as she’s ever seen it, the poker face he uses when a suspect isn’t responding to the Bad Cop routine. Garcia keeps pushing her glasses up, even though they’re already settled on the bridge of her nose. JJ can’t stop blinking. Even Hotchner looks uncomfortable.   
  
When no one says anything Reid sits up straighter, folds his arms across his chest and  _glares_  at Morgan. No—she realises with a jolt—not just Morgan. That look’s meant for her, too.   
  
So much for getting her team to trust her this week. Fine. Another thing to worry about later, when the case is closed and they don’t have three victims and an Unsub whose time between kills is decreasing fast.   
  
“Tell us what you know.”   
  
If she’s going to be everyone’s whipping girl, she may as well use it.   
  
—   
  
Gideon and Hotch take Prentiss with them to bring Nathan in. Reid pours himself a new cup of coffee, takes the crime scene reports for each victim to his desk, and tells himself he doesn’t mind. It’s the right call, he knows it. If Nathan resists, he’s the last person anyone wants as backup. But it’s still an effort to keep his teeth from grinding as he sorts through photographs and files, looking for some nuance he’s missed so far.  
  
He stares at the photo of their second Jane Doe again. Tries to imagine the moments before her death. Someone like Nathan wouldn’t even seem like a threat. He’d be awkward, sweet—sexual sadists usually have excellent manners, at least at first. Not too big, either, the sort of person you might be able to take in a fight, if it really counted, if your life was—  
  
“Reid,” Morgan says, and he nearly jumps out of his chair. He’s hovering at the edge of Reid’s desk, a mug of his own in his hands. He must have come from the break room, just out of his line of sight.   
  
“What?” he doesn’t mean to snap, but the look on Morgan’s face suggests this is going to be one of those conversations anyway.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell us, kid?”  
  
“That I dated a potential serial killer? Somehow I didn’t think spreading that around would improve your perception of me as an FBI agent.”   
  
Morgan actually looks hurt. “Kid, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.” He sits on the edge of the desk, almost on top of one of the crime scene photos. Reid has to fight the urge to push him off. Will, if he hears that nickname one more time. “That actress whose case we worked on last year, I wouldn’t have bugged you so hard about her if you’d just told me you were,” he trails off and shrugs, like it’s up to Reid to fill in the blank.  
  
“What?” This time the irritation in his voice is all intentional. “If I’d just told you I was what, Morgan?”  
  
“Not,” Morgan shrugs again, fidgets, “interested in women.”   
  
“One, there are any number of perfectly serviceable terms for ‘homosexual’ you could use instead of avoiding the issue.” He’s talking too fast now, words coming out in sharp, rapid-fire bursts. “Two, it’s really none of your business what my sexual preference is. Three—”  
  
“Kid,” Morgan starts, holding his hands up. And that is it.  
  
“Three,” he shoves his chair back from the desk, reaching for the stack of case files, “instead of assuming you know everything about me, based on one piece of evidence, you could try asking me about your assumptions.”  
  
“You want me to ask if you’re gay?” And good for him, Reid thinks, he actually gets the word out this time.  
  
“Exactly,” Reid says, and plucks his coffee mug off the desk. “Now, if you need me for something work related, I’ll be in Garcia’s office.”  
  
He’s a little disappointed there’s no door for him to slam on his way out of the bullpen.   
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
December 1998**  
  
There’s a garbage can holding Spencer’s door open. Nathan toes it out of the way, then throws himself down on the bed and groans. “I’m never moving from here, okay?”  
  
Spencer looks up from the notepad he’s scribbling on and gives him a small, sympathetic smile. “How was the exam?”  
  
He groans again and buries his face in Spencer’s crumpled, unmade sheets. “I don’t even know. I may have forgotten how to add.”  
  
The mattress dips next to his head, and he feels fingers stroke through his hair. “I think that means you’ve had a relatively normal first semester.”  
  
Had. Past tense. He’s halfway through first year now. It hadn’t hit him yet. The last two months have been so busy, he barely noticed them go by. He hasn’t done anything to the magazine under his bed in weeks. Hasn’t had time to sleep long enough for the dreams to come back.   
  
Maybe if he can stay busy enough, maybe—but he’s not sure it’s safe to hope yet.  
  
“So you think they’ll let me come back after the break?” he asks instead.   
  
Spencer bops him on the temple instead of answering. “When do you go back to DC?”  
  
“Sunday morning,” he rolls onto his back and folds his arms behind his head. “I think I have to get to the airport by seven. And you’re going to Vegas?”  
  
“Next Friday. I’m hoping I’ll get another chapter written if I have the library to myself for a week.” He pulls his legs onto the bed, and prods Nathan in the side until he makes space for him between his body and the wall.   
  
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me? I still think my mom would be so happy to have proof I have a social life, that she wouldn’t mind having someone else for Christmas.”   
  
“I can’t,” Spencer says, curling in so his back is to the wall. “I have to figure out what to do with the house now that mom’s,” he frowns, and the end of his sentence barely comes out, “not living there.”  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Sometimes Nathan really wants to tell Spencer not to poke his own sore spots. He’ll settle for distraction. “Is it okay if I stay the night? After that exam, even walking across campus sounds like too much work.”  
  
Spencer nods and gives a soft, affirmative hum, still frowning. He’s doing it again, Nathan thinks: getting stuck in his head. He rolls onto his side and crowds up against him, until Spencer’s pressed flush against the wall.   
  
“You’re thinking too loud.”  
  
“Sorry,” he tucks his head into the crook of Nathan’s shoulder and curls an arm around his waist. It’s only four in the afternoon, but it would be so easy to fall asleep now, like this.   
  
“I’ll call you on Christmas, okay?” he says. “And New Years. We can talk our way into 1999, or something.”  
  
“My New Year or yours?” Spencer asks, breath warm and moist on his neck.   
  
“Both.”  
  
That gets him a laugh, “There’s a three hour gap, you know.”  
  
“Then I’ll come up with something that takes three hours to talk about.” Spencer pulls back enough to give him a disbelieving look, and he grins. “You could tell me about your dissertation. It’d probably take that long for you to explain the title.”  
  
“Probably,” Spencer says, mouth twitching into a smirk. “Or, sorry. Should I have lied and said we’d get through the first chapter, at least?”  
  
Nathan pushes him back against the wall again and bites him on the jaw—soft, not even hard enough to bruise.   
  
“Oh, that’s why you want to stay,” Spencer says, and Nathan bets that was supposed to come out teasing instead of breathy and murmured.   
  
—   
  
And it’s only December, only the end of his first semester, only 5:30 on a Thursday afternoon, two weeks away from the New Year. But as he drifts off, sticky and sweaty and still tangled up in Spencer, it’s not that hard to imagine the summer. Dragging Spencer to DC, then being dragged around the Smithsonian. Spending muggy afternoons sprawled next to the air conditioner. Maybe even telling his mom than his best friend isn’t just a friend.   
  
Or further on than that. Graduation. Grad school. Convincing Spencer to do his eighth PhD somewhere on the east coast, at a school with a decent MFA program. Sleeping through the next hundred thousand nights and never dreaming about butterflies or Lilly Adams. Forgetting what MacPherson Square even looks like.   
  
He’s not stupid. He’s seen enough movies, read enough books. He knows that being in—that having someone, it doesn’t fix everything.   
  
But god, Nathan hopes it might be enough to fix  _him_.


	4. ACT IV

**Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006**  
  
Garcia’s office does have a door he can slam. She jumps when it rattles in its frame and spins to face him, clutching a feather-topped pen like it’s a baseball bat.  
  
“Spencer Reid, you scared the crap out of me.” She presses a hand to her chest and sinks into her chair, turning back towards him with a squeak of wheels and springs. Which must be when she notices the look on his face, because her left eyebrow arcs up into her bangs and her lips settle into a worried moue. “Oh no, what happened?”  
  
“Morgan tried to ask me if,” he starts, then shakes his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”  
  
“Ah,” she sticks the pen behind her ear, green feathers curling around the arm of her glasses. “I take it from your expression that you decided not to explain the intricate mysteries of bisexuality to our resident alpha male?”  
  
“Something like—” he stops, blinks. “Wait, did you know?”  
  
“Duh,” she spins her chair in another neat 180 arc and pulls up something on her screen. “I know everything. If I were you I’d be more surprised that Gideon noticed. I always thought you could take that man to a Pride parade and he’d just ask you when rainbows became so popular.”  
  
Reid lets out a surprised puff of laughter and feels some of the tension slip out of his shoulders. “Actually, I told him when he first tried to recruit me to the Bureau. I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that would look good on an application form.”  
  
“Sweetie, I know the FBI isn’t exactly the Castro, but J. Edgar Hoover’s been dead a long time.”  
  
“You know what I mean.” The look Garcia gives him over his shoulder is so loaded it makes his stomach ache, and he starts talking again before she can say anything. “Is it okay if I stay in here for a bit? I just need to go over some things in my head, and it’s a little distracting out there.”  
  
“Only if you promise not to eat, and keep that coffee away from everything.” She points to an unopened folding stool leaning against her spare desk. “Throw in a thank-you latte the next time you pass a coffee shop, and I’ll even let you sit.”  
  
He’s got Holly Liddell’s autopsy report balanced his knees when Garcia asks, out of nowhere, “Was he your first?” Her voice is full of barely restrained empathy, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the computer screen. Reid remembers why he loves her.   
  
“Boyfriend?” he stares down at the report, stumbling over words that are already etched into his brain. Tries to keep his voice steady, fights the urge to mumble. “He was the only one. I guess I don’t date much.”  
  
“Spencer,” he looks up at that, then back down at the files when he sees her staring at him. “I read the hospital reports. I read all of them. I know about...” she trails off, touches a hand to her mouth, then lets it fall back to her lap.  
  
“He never told me,” he doesn’t mean to say it out loud. Can’t quite force himself to stop. “For the longest time, I didn’t even know anything was wrong. And I know it’s egotistical to think that I could have fixed anything. I just, I always wondered if things would have been different, if I’d known.”  
  
Garcia bites her lip and watches him with big, wet eyes. Reid hunches in on himself, and pretends he’s doing it because it makes it easier to read.   
  
This time, both of them jump when Prentiss opens the door.  
  
“He’s here.”  
  
—   
  
 **Washington DC  
December 1998**  
  
His mother has an on-call shift at the hospital his fourth night back. She apologises for it about eighty times on the cab ride home from the airport. Nathan has to let her bribe him with pizza and twenty dollars in movie rentals, just to get her to stop talking about it.   
  
Guilt money. It’s been a long time since that happened. For the first few years after his dad died, she’d have something every week. A video game when she had to work through parent-teacher interviews. A ten-dollar bump in his allowance when one of the university courses she taught got rescheduled and she couldn’t pick him up after school.   
  
He thought DC would be different when he came back, but he didn’t think he’d be moving backwards in time.  
  
He’s seen films like this. The Hero comes home after years away to find his childhood bedroom untouched, the neighbourhood practically preserved in amber, like a prehistoric insect. But he hasn’t been to war or prison, hasn’t left the country to make his fortune. Hasn’t even been gone six months.   
  
It’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid. But everything—the clothes he didn’t take to California that still fit, the books left on his shelf he still remembers reading last summer—it’s so surreal to see. Like his life here never stopped.   
  
Like the last semester didn’t happen at all.   
  
He wakes up on the couch. Ten minutes away from 5:00 a.m., halfway through the plot of a movie he doesn’t remember putting in. Turns it off, brushes his teeth without turning on the bathroom lights. He’s standing on a chair, rifling through the top shelf of his closet when he catches himself. Hands wrapped around a Scrabble box, old enough that the corners have gone soft and fuzzy with wear.   
  
“Fuck,” it slips in his hands, nearly drops to the floor. He shoves it back in, hard, under an old math textbook and a box of Lego that holds about half the parts for a space station. Lets his legs fold under him, then drops onto the chair. Pushes down on his knees, to keep his legs from shaking.  
  
Muscle memory. Or old habits dying hard. It doesn’t mean anything. Means nothing.  
  
He wonders if it’s too late for a phone call in Pasadena.   
  
—   
  
He’s in the bookstore, browsing the Sci Fi/Horror racks in search of Spencer’s Christmas gift when he sees her.   
  
She’s at the best-seller rack, up near the cash register, back to the rest of the store. Blonde hair spilling down her shoulders, short skirt riding up her thighs as she bends down to look at something—maybe that new John Grisham everyone seems to be reading on the subway this week.   
  
His chest goes tight, and he doesn’t understand why he can’t breathe until he realises he’s got himself crushed against the bookcase so tightly that one of the hardcovers is pressing into his sternum. He eases off a little. Enough to let his lungs work, not enough to put him in anyone’s line of sight. Clutches at the side of the shelf and lets himself lean around it just enough to look.   
  
She’s still bent over. Reading the little, hand written synopsis the bookstore does for all its top-selling material, probably. She flicks her hair over her shoulder and he can trace the line of it down to her hips.   
  
God, his mouth is so dry. When he licks his lips, he can’t believe no one else hears it, hears every hoarse rattle of air he’s dragging in. He pulls himself—has to actually pull, finally understands how ‘tearing yourself away’ can be literal—back behind the bookcase. Puts his head down, so his forehead presses into the soft page-tops of a row of paperbacks. Hauls in air and counts to ten.  
  
When he looks back around the corner she’s gone.  
  
He doesn’t remember leaving the store. Outside, the street is choked with pre-Christmas traffic. He shouldn’t be able to find her. But there she is, half a block away, the only clear thing in a sea of half-smeared, out of focus faces. He doesn’t mean to run, but he blinks and she’s barely a foot away. His hand closes around her shoulder, pulls her around to face him.   
  
For a second she looks confused. Then the red slash of her mouth pulls into a big, open ‘O.’ The blacked out rips where her eyes should be seem to crinkle up at the corners.  
  
She takes his hand and pulls him off the sidewalk, into the dark. An alley. They do this in alleys.   
  
He pushes his hands in, under her shirt. Her skin is sticky, warm.   
  
Here in the dark it’s easy to push harder. Muscle and bone push back against his palms, trying to resist. Another push, and it’s like turning a key in a lock, just a click. So easy.  
  
When he pulls back, there’s just enough light to watch the blood drain out of his cupped hands in a slow, red trickle.   
  
Nathan wakes up with his face pressed into his pillow, heart thudding and sheets a sticky, wadded mess between his legs.   
  
—   
  
Dream time, real time, they’re not so different any more.  
  
He barely remembers leaving the house. Getting dressed, throwing his bedding in the washing machine, locking the front door. Everything rushes by.   
  
It’s cold in DC tonight. The people he passes in the street are all bundled up, even the drunk ones are trailing scarves, falling out of knee-length coats. Nathan stays close to the buildings, out of the wind. Hands jammed in his pockets, head down. This close to Christmas, everyone’s too busy to notice another teenager on the street.   
  
It gets worse, the closer he gets. Neon lights leave smears on his retinas. Cars and bars and a few late-night stores blare Christmas tunes. Silent Night and Jingle Bells and Here Comes Santa Claus all muddling together into dissonant chords. Half blind, half deaf, it’s a miracle no one runs him down when he crosses at corners. That he doesn’t stumble out into the street.   
  
Traffic on K Street is bad as always. Cars with one window rolled down pour little puffs of steam out into the night. A Lexus cuts off a taxi as it pulls up to the kerb, and a horn adds its sharp falsetto to the blur of noise pollution.   
  
One of the whores is wearing a pair of felt reindeer antlers. Nathan tucks himself into a deserted doorway and watches her talk to the man in the car, leaned in with a hand braced on the door. Her coat is heavy looking, fur trimmed, but she’s got it folded back behind her, exposing herself to the street. Plenty of room to go around it. To find somewhere soft, and dig in.   
  
He strokes his fingertips against his palms, from the heels of his hands, down across his laugh line, up towards knuckles. So good. It would feel so good, that warmth between his fingers. Would her blood make a sound if it hit the pavement?  _If a whore falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it,_  he thinks, and feels a half-hysterical laugh wedge its way up his throat.  
  
The man in the Lexus nods and the whore disappears around the side of the car and into the passenger seat. Just up the street, two more lean against a lamp post, sharing a cigarette. Another one appears from one of the alleys. Nathan turns his head away, gives the man she’s taken back there ( _for sex_ , a little voice keeps screaming at him,  _for sex, for sex, for sex_ ) time to pull himself together and fall back into the faceless, formless crowd.   
  
When he looks again, the third one of them is checking her reflection in a shop window, angling her head to see past the security bars. Her neck is thin, pale. He rubs his fingers across his hands again, harder, and settles back against the wall to watch.   
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
January 1999**  
  
Spencer’s plane gets in an hour earlier than Nathan’s. He spends it drinking bad airport coffee, making a sign that reads ‘Harris’ in big block letters on a paper napkin, throwing the sign in the garbage when he decides the idea is lame instead of funny, then making another one when he changes his mind again.   
  
He’s holding his second napkin in front of him in his best chauffer imitation when Nathan comes through the arrivals gate, backpack slung over one shoulder and a wheeled suitcase trailing behind him. Spencer watches him stop for a moment, look around, then double-take and grin when their eyes meet. Nathan crosses the twenty feet of space between them at a run, but Spencer doesn’t think to brace himself and nearly falls onto his own luggage cart when Nathan’s body slams into his, arms wrapping around his neck. He’s still got one arm out, windmilling for balance, when Nathan pulls his face down and kisses him hard on the mouth.   
  
Over the top of Nathan’s head, he can see the other disembarking passengers stare, and feels his face turn red. But Nathan doesn’t seem to notice, or doesn’t care. Just buries his face in Spencer’s neck and holds on, suitcase lying forgotten on the ground behind him.   
  
“Hey,” he whispers, tilting his head so he’s speaking into Nathan’s hair.   
  
“Hey,” Nathan mumbles back. His voice is hoarse, scratchy. Too many hours breathing recycled plane air, probably. “Missed you.”  
  
“Me too,” which is why he lets himself enjoy another few seconds of contact before bringing his hands up and stepping back. Nathan’s eyes are red-rimmed and unfocussed, and he squeezes his shoulders to get his attention before letting go. “We should find a taxi.”  
  
“Mm,” he’s looking back over Spencer’s shoulder now, and he doesn’t have to follow his line of sight to guess what’s caught his attention. Three stuffed and bulging suitcases are stacked on his luggage cart. Everything he couldn’t fit, or couldn’t bring himself to leave, in his newly rented Las Vegas storage unit.   
  
“Need help with those?” is all he says, and if Spencer believed in any sort of omnipotent, interfering deity, he would thank it right now.   
  
—  
  
They get about three steps into his dorm room, just far enough to toss their bags against the wall, before Nathan pulls Spencer against him. Or maybe he pushes Nathan into the door. Hard to say which.  
  
“Really missed you,” Nathan breathes against his lips. He’s trying to unbutton Spencer’s shirt one-handed, and while it doesn’t seem to be working, even that little touch is making his knees shake.   
  
He groans in what he hopes is an agreeable-sounding manner and pushes his hands under Nathan’s sweater and t-shirt, rucking them up over his head. Skin. Who knew you could miss someone else’s skin?   
  
Nathan’s got his face pressed into his neck again, all teeth and tongue now. Hands fumbling with Spencer’s belt and zipper. “This would have gotten us kicked out of the airport,” he mumbles, trying to laugh and gulp in air and not really managing either. He gets a grin in response, feels a hand slide into his underwear and cup. Nearly gives himself a concussion when his head thumps against the door over Nathan’s shoulder. “Oh god.”  
  
That his legs don’t give out before they hit the bed is a post-Christmas miracle in itself. He even manages to get most of his clothing slung over his desk chair, though all but one leg of his pants ends up on the floor. Nathan rolls on top of him, presses his legs open with a hip, makes him buck and whine. He flails out with one arm, until his hand smacks into the side of the desk. Feels along it until his fingers snag against the drawer handle, then pulls. The angle’s not great for picking anything out, but Nathan seems to know what he’s after, even with his eyes closed and his mouth burning a trail down Spencer’s ribs.   
  
There’s a few seconds of fumbling, a few familiar sounds, then Nathan’s hand under his leg, pushing it up and back. And he’d read about this before, imagined it, but it’s always a shock how good that first press of Nathan’s fingers in him is. How good it feels to let his body take over, as his mind stutters and stalls. His fingers tangle in Nathan’s curls and he feels a moan against his throat more than he hears it.   
  
And—oh, god—it’s been the worst month of his life. Sleeping in that house, her house, their home. Packing her things, trying to decipher the Las Vegas real estate market, which might actually take more than an IQ of 187. Trying to work up the nerve to visit. Spending Christmas alone, reading journal articles online and trying to breathe through the guilt. He doesn’t deserve to come back to this.   
  
Nathan presses a third finger in, and that’s new, they haven’t tried that before. He doesn’t hear the noise it rips out of him, but it’s enough to make Nathan still and raise himself up on one arm. And Spencer’s not so far gone that he misses the way his elbow nearly buckles on him, the way his pupils are consuming his irises. “Can I,” he swallows, lets out a huff of air, “can I keep going?”  
  
“Please.” It comes out remarkably steady, all things considered, but it’s enough to make Nathan’s arm give out, to make him press his fingers in until Spencer sees stars and has to press his forearm over his mouth to muffle a shout.   
  
When Nathan reaches into the still-open desk drawer a second time, his brain finally catches up with the rest of him. He’s had a box of condoms in there since the end of November, shoved in the back corner. They haven’t exactly talked about it—about  _sex_ , he corrects, because if he can’t use the word he doesn’t have any business being in this position. But they both know the box is there. Know why it’s there.   
  
 _I’m not going to die a virgin_ , he thinks. Of course, by some modern definitions he hasn’t been one since the night he kissed Nathan for the first time. Still. _Wow._  
  
Nathan sits back on his heels, condoms clutched in one hand, eyes wide and mouth open. Completely still, except for the hand trembling against Spencer’s thigh and the heave of his shoulders as he pants.   
  
It’s a struggle to get himself upright. With his legs spread like this his balance is destroyed, and when he gets his head up a wave of dizziness nearly sends him back down. He grabs at Nathan’s shoulder for support, practically falls into a kiss. But he does manage a muttered, “Yes,” against Nathan’s mouth.   
  
And the noise Nathan makes in response—even if he didn’t have an eidetic memory, he doesn’t think he’d ever be able to forget that.  
  
—   
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006 **  
  
Hotch pulls him aside outside the interrogation room, and one look at his face is enough to make Reid’s nails dig into his palms. “You’re not going to let me in.”  
  
“If Nathan Harris is our Unsub,” Hotch says, and Reid doesn’t miss the stress he puts on ‘if,’ “you can’t be directly involved in this case. You’re emotionally compromised. If I put you in there, it could ruin any chance we have of prosecuting him.”   
  
“I’m not—”  
  
“Reid,” Hotch’s voice is still measured and even, but the effect is like running into a brick wall. Some day he’ll figure out how he does that. “Morgan and Prentiss are working on victimology. You can either go back to the bullpen and help them look for new leads or stay and watch. Those are your options.”  
  
“I’ll stay,”he says. Hotch nods, and Reid half expects him to tell him to behave himself. Maybe instructions not to draw on the walls, and to put his toys away when he’s done.  
  
But all he says is, “Good,” before he turns on his heel and heads back down the hall, leaving Reid to let himself into the surveillance room.   
  
—  
  
Aaron Hotchner tries not to spend much time thinking about his agents’ personal lives. Of course, Morgan’s one-night stands are the stuff of legend—he’s spent too many in-office days dressing out of his go bag for anything else—and he was already an SSA when Gideon’s ex-wife filed for divorce. But that’s as far as it goes. So long as nothing affects their work in the field, it’s none of his business who his team members see, or don’t see.   
  
He hadn’t even known Elle Greenaway had an ex-husband until he ran into him at the ICU the night she was shot.   
  
As it should be. The team needs a life outside of the BAU. Something to go home to that doesn’t follow them into the office the next morning. It’s why he doesn’t like letting Haley bring Jack in for visits, even when their cases keep him at Quantico for fourteen hours at a time.   
  
On a team like this, it’s easy to bond. To become friends, even to form a sort of ersatz family. But this shouldn’t be all they have. Especially for someone like Reid, who Hotch suspects will start sleeping here more often than not when the Bureau gives him his own office in a decade or so.   
  
At the end of the day, they’re all just co-workers. They deserve to have a few secrets.  
  
Which makes his current position one of the most uncomfortable he can imagine.  
  
He looks up from the case file. Across the table, Nathan Harris jerks the corners of his mouth up into a tight, awkward smile he doesn’t bother to return.   
  
“Mr. Harris, do you know why you’re here?”  
  
The smile flattens, Harris’ eyebrows knit together. “It’s because of the killings, isn’t it? On K Street? Someone’s murdering prostitutes.”  
  
“We haven’t released that information publically.” Congresswoman Steyer saw to that. “How do you know about the victims?”  
  
“I walk that way some times,” it comes out smooth, and just a little too fast. “It’s on the way to my mom’s apartment. We have dinner sometimes. I saw the crime scenes.”  
  
“You must be close,” Gideon says, and Harris’ eyes widen in confusion. “To go there for dinner so often in one month.”  
  
“I—okay, I started walking down there more often, after I saw the first scene. Just to see if anything else was happening,” he seems to sense the question they’ll ask, because he keeps talking, still a little too fast. “My degree is in Abnormal Psych. Prostitutes are pretty common targets for, you know.”   
  
Under the table, Hotchner can see Harris’ leg bounce, knee barely missing the underside of the table. “For?”  
  
“Serial killers. They’re sort of a research interest.” Bounce, bounce. “I... They hadn’t taken out the first body when I got there. That level of violence, cutting off their hair, it doesn’t usually mean someone’s looking to kill just once.”  
  
It could be true. He’s seen enough serial killer buffs in his time. Enough would-be profilers, too. Still. “Mr. Harris, witnesses have put you in the area just after sunrise, about the time these women were murdered.”  
  
“It seemed like the best time to look,” he looks past them both, at the mirror set into the back wall. Sits up straighter, asks, “Is this because I talked to Spencer?”  
  
 _Spencer._  Hotchner feels his jaw tighten, tries not to let it show. “We’re not here to discuss Agent Reid,” it comes out harsher than he’d intended. To his left, he can see Gideon looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He pretends not to notice and flips open the folder in front of him. Turns it so Harris can see its contents: autopsy photos, stacked so he can spread them across the table with a twitch of his hand.   
  
“What can you tell us about these women?”  
  
—   
  
 **Pasadena, California  
January 1999**  
  
“Nathan?”   
  
Next to him, Nathan raises his head from the pillow they’re sharing to give him a bleary, half-asleep look. “Yeah?”  
  
“I, ah,” Spencer sits up, feeling a small, unfamiliar ripple of pain shoot up his tailbone as he does. He ignores it, twines his hands together in his lap. “I know post-coital declarations don’t typically hold the same weight as regular conversation, but.”   
  
His heart feels like it’s slamming against his lungs. He doesn’t have to say it. Shouldn’t say it, maybe. But there’s a part of him that needs to do this. To prove the bottom won’t drop out of the world when he opens his mouth again.   
  
“Spencer?” Nathan’s rolled onto his side now, head propped up on one arm, watching. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah. Yes,” it’s a forgone conclusion, anyway. He doesn’t think he could stop himself if he tried. “I love you.”  
  
For one too-long moment the expression on Nathan’s face is unreadable. When he finally smiles, Spencer has to re-teach himself to breathe. “Yeah, love you too.”  
  
—   
  
Nathan doesn’t get a chance to unpack until the next afternoon. His roommate crashes out on the bed the second he gets in—a red eye flight from Dallas that got delayed on the runway. Nathan waits another half hour after that, until all he can hear is deep, steady breathing, before digging to the bottom of his suitcase, littering the floor with jeans and t-shirts and socks.   
  
Even with a cross-country flight, the Scrabble box is no worse for wear. Maybe a little more scuffed at the corners, a little dented in the centre. But unopened, intact.   
  
For a while he just stares at it, lying there in the bottom of the black nylon bag. Zipper teeth frame either side, like the face of a corpse in a body bag on tv. He traces his fingers over the letters, so lightly he can only just feel the softened cardboard against his skin.  
  
It’s only when his roommate turns and mutters in his sleep that Nathan snaps out of his trance and shoves the box under his bed, back against the wall where no one will see.   
  
—   
  
 **Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006 **  
  
Reid wonders if he’s imagining things, or if he really can see Nathan’s pupils dilate every time he looks at the photos of the victims.   
  
Through the intercom, Hotch’s voice sounds canned and only half real. “Tell us about the time you spent in the Poplar Springs Psychiatric Hospital.”  
  
Nathan doesn’t look surprised. No reason that he should, Reid thinks. The sigh he lets out, however, sounds awfully weary. “I had a problem with women.”  
  
“A lot of people have problems with women,” Gideon says. The gentlest, most companionable Bad Cop you’d ever meet. “But most people who can’t get a date don’t spend years in psychiatric care.”  
  
Reid bites hard at the inside of his cheek. He knows what Gideon’s doing—their Unsub is all about proving himself, taking back power. Make him feel small enough and he’ll lash out. Not that the logic does much to help his ego, or tamp down the resentment building inside him.  
  
“I though about killing them,” Nathan says, monotone. “About cutting them open. All the time, and I couldn’t make it stop.”  
  
Neither Gideon or Hotch says anything. A nice, open silence, waiting to be filled.  
  
“When I was in DC I’d have these dreams, where I found one of them on the street and I,” he falters, “hurt her. I’d wake up, and it was like I was sleepwalking. I’d wander around K Street, watching them.”  
  
“Them?” Gideon says, voice still so soft, like he could be a voice in your own head, reminding you to clarify your thoughts for the nice officers.  
  
“Prostitutes, mostly,” and that gets a wry smile out of him. “When I said they’re a pretty common target, I knew what I was talking about.  
  
“It felt like I was going crazy,” there’s an inflection starting to creep into Nathan’s voice now. Remorse? Nostalgia? “Right before I went into the hospital, I read everything I could find about—about the way I was feeling.   
  
“The homicidal triangle didn’t fit, but the stuff the BSU was putting out—that bulletin? ‘The Criminal Sexual Sadist’? It was like someone was writing out of my head.” He looks down at his knees. Six years later, Reid still knows that heave of his shoulders. Can hear him sucking in air, even if the intercom isn’t sensitive enough to pick it up. “At Poplar, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where it came from, trying to make it go away.”  
  
“And?” Hotch, this time. Not as cold as before, but without Gideon’s veneer of empathy.  
  
“It took a long time.” Nathan looks up again, back stiff, making eye contact. “You’ve probably seen the files, so I won’t pretend I didn’t backslide a few times. But yes. I’m better. I see a psychiatrist once a week, I can give you her number if you want, tell her it’s okay to talk to you.”  
  
“Does she know you’re spending your nights on K Street again?” Hotch asks, and Reid can see Nathan flinch at the question.   
  
“I told you, I’m looking for the killer. I’m trying to help,” his voice still gets scratchy when he’s upset.   
  
“By watching prostitutes at four in the morning?” Hotch’s voice is cold steel again. “What are you really getting out of it?”  
  
“You guys have science, but I’ve thought the way he thinks. It’s what I was trying to tell you on the subway, before I chickened out.” Nathan’s eyes are still staring straight ahead, but he isn’t looking at Hotch or Gideon. If Reid hadn’t already known he’d been made, this would be the tip off. “I thought if I could find him, I don’t know, maybe I could talk to him. Get him to turn himself in.”  
  
Hotch pushes his chair away from the table. Gideon waits half a beat, then follows suit. Reid waits until he’s sure they’ve headed back to the bullpen, then lets himself lean against the glass, watching as Nathan drags his hands over his face and cradles his head in his arms.


	5. ACT V

**Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006 **

“What do you think,” Morgan asks, “is this Harris guy our Unsub?”

They’re back in the briefing room. Everyone at the table except Reid, who hovers near the doorway. Even Garcia’s out of her office again, though Prentiss is starting to suspect she’s here for moral support more than the case. 

“It’s too early to say,” Hotch replies. “He has unreleased knowledge of the crime scenes, his history matches the profile. At any rate, we’ll have enough to keep him in custody until we know for sure.”   
He turns to the rest of the team—which, given that he isn’t making eye contact with her or Reid, and Gideon’s in his blind spot, pretty much consists of JJ and Garcia. “For now, keep working on the profile with an open mind. If you find a lead, follow it.”

“Hotch, you’ve said it yourself, this guy fits the profile,” Morgan points out. “And that story of his about looking for the killer doesn’t give him any kind of credible alibi. Why not focus on him?”

Hotch pauses, as though he’s working out his response in his head. “Even if Harris is our Unsub, I don’t want there to be any suggestion we’ve been less than objective in our investigation.”

Prentiss doesn’t let herself turn to look at Reid, but she wants to.

“If there’s a chance the killer is still out there, shouldn’t we be releasing this information to the press?” JJ flips her notebook open, clicks her pen. “I could have a conference set up in time for the eleven o’clock news.”

“Not yet.”

“With all due respect, sir, don’t you think the women working in the area should know they’re at risk?” The rest of the team is staring at her.  _Tone it down, Emily._

“We’ve been asked to keep this case out of the media,” there’s a definite pause before Hotch says ‘asked,’ and suddenly Erin Steyer’s afternoon visit makes a lot more sense. “There’s going to be a statement made on the Hill the day after tomorrow, about a major drop in the city’s violent crime rate.”

“And a DC serial killer doesn’t fit in with the image Congresswoman Steyer wants to project,” she manages to keep her voice even, this time, but Hotch gives her a warning look anyway. 

— 

“Agent Prentiss, can I see you in my office?”

They frown at each other across the expanse of Hotchner’s desk. If Emily’s honest with herself, she’s surprised this moment has been so long in coming. 

“I don’t enjoy being disrespected in front of the team, agent,” if all you could hear was Hotch’s inflection, this would sound like any routine business meeting. She tries to make her’s match.

“With all due respect, sir, I could say the same.” She hasn’t figured Aaron Hotchner out yet, but she’s willing to bet subservience isn’t going to get her anything new. The worst he can do is ask her to leave. And if she had enough time, she’s sure she could imagine something worse. 

“How do you know Congresswoman Steyer?” 

Politics. She knew it was coming, but it’s still a disappointment. “She worked for my mother. She’s an old family friend.”

“Did you tell her about the case?” 

“Excuse me?”

“You show up without being requested, with paperwork I didn’t sign off on—”

“You’re asking me if I’m a spy?” On another day, another case, maybe she would be able to reel herself back in. But the air in the bullpen has been close to igniting all day, and Holly Liddell’s death certificate is still lying on her desk. “Sir, this isn’t the X Files, and I haven’t smoked since I was seventeen. I work for you, and the same people you do.”

Hotch doesn’t seem to get the reference. Or, if there is a secret sci-fi fan hiding behind the tie and jacket, he ignores it. “I can’t run this team if I don’t trust its members. You’ve done good work here, but if you have a political agenda I’m sure there’s another department better suited to your needs.” 

Politics again. She almost wants to laugh. One of the best profilers in the country, maybe the world, and he can’t read her at all. 

“You’ve met my mother. Did you like her?”

— 

**Pasadena, California  
February 1999**

This girl is different this time. From the back, she doesn’t look like anyone from the magazines. Tall enough for a model, but skinny. All shoulders and legs. No hips, no curves. 

Pretty, though. Blonde. And that’s enough for what he’s going to do.

Her face, he recognizes. The pink pulpy mass of his latest art project. Almost featureless now, except for a hint of darker red where her perfect, pouting lips used to be. Her body is familiar too, once it’s undressed. From something else—where? That flat chest, doesn’t seem right. But her skin, that’s dead on. So pale. When he draws the knife down through it, it looks so good against the red. Perfect, fucking perfect. 

It’s not until she leans up that he makes the connection. Until she whispers, through the moist, ragged hollow that used to be her mouth, that it all makes sense. 

“Nathan,” Spencer says, and his eyes snap open.

The first thing he sees, is skin. 

He rolls onto his back and nearly falls off the bed. Spencer goes with him, puts a hand on his back to steady him. “Sorry, sorry. You have class in an hour. I thought you might want to go pick up your books.” 

And he nods, gets up, gets ready, even drops a good bye kiss on Spencer’s shoulder before he goes. But all he can think of is the way the knife glinted, when it caught the light from Spencer’s desk lamp. How good the blood looked, spreading out on old flannel sheets. 

All of it so fucking beautiful, and he doesn’t know what to do.

— 

He’s on his way to dinner when he finds the package. An oblong box, wrapped in an old newspaper, with a single sheet of computer paper on top, folded in threes. ‘SPENCER’ it says on the outside, in Nathan’s messy, familiar scrawl. 

Spencer shoves a foot in the door to wedge it open, picks up the box and carries it inside. Tries to think of a reason for the theatrics. It’s not an anniversary, as far as he knows. Six months won’t be until March, and they haven’t celebrated any of the other meaningless markers of time that couples at his high school used to. Valentine’s is coming up, maybe he’s just a few days early.

He unfolds the note, and the box hits the floor.

_Spencer,_

_You deserve more than a letter. If I could do this face to face, I would, but I can’t._

_I’m so sorry._

He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to pretend he’s got an average reading speed, that Nathan’s handwriting is hard to decipher, that he hasn’t seen the rest of it. That he can’t still see it, scrawled across the backs of his eyelids. 

_I tried to stop. I promise I tried to stop. But I can’t. I’m not even sure if I want to any more. I’m scared of how good this feels. How much better it might feel, to do more. I tried to think of something else, but this is all I could come up with. If I could fix me some other way, I would._

_When you look in the box, you’ll understand._

_I promise I’m never going to hurt you. I really, really promise._

_I love you._

_I’m sorry._

The last part is underlined so many times, there’s a gash in the page. 

He doesn’t want to look in the box. Doesn’t, can’t, but he’s down on the ground anyway, fingers scrabbling at the wrapping, tearing, pulling. A Scrabble box, a little frayed around the edges. He doesn’t understand. Big, genius brain, and it’s not giving him anything. 

He pulls the lid off, and blinks at a copy of Cosmopolitan from April 1997. The model on the cover looks vaguely familiar, probably in some movie he’s seen. The sell-lines look like standard women’s magazine stuff: fashion and sex tips and something about male psychology. Nothing out of the ordinary, except it’s almost two inches thick, its cover bulging away from the spine. Spencer pulls it out of the box, lets it fall open at random. 

And gets it.

An ad for soap. A photo of a woman, mostly naked, curled in on herself, cheek pressed against her knee. Her legs are gone, replaced with a collage of taped-on images. Scars, burns, photographs that must be from newspapers—so small and grainy all he can see is red. 

He shuts the magazine, then pulls it open to a different page. The head of a swimsuit model is a red haze, scratched out with pen. When he touches the spot where her stomach should be, his finger goes right through the page, touches an image of a car crash, scotch-taped into a shampoo ad. The magazine slips out of his fingers and skips across the floor, pages flapping with the momentum.

The next thing in the box is a copy of Maxim. He can’t even look at the cover of that one. Instead, he tips the whole box out. More magazines. Some pornography. All of it the same, inside. Pictures and punctures and pen scrawls. So much time spent. So much care.

“No,” he tells the collection of smiling, ruined faces spread out in front of him. “No, no, no.”

_If I could fix me some other way, I would._

_I’m sorry._

He leaves the letter on the floor, half-hidden under the lid of the box. He’s already halfway down the hall when he hears the door slam behind him. 

— 

When he gets to Nathan’s room, he nearly slides past the door. Too much momentum. He grabs the door handle to stop himself, and his shoulder collides with the wood. Inside the room, he can hear someone move. He bangs at the door with the heel of his hand, then his fist. “Nathan?” it comes out strangled, half panted. He’s not a runner. Twelve year-old geniuses don’t go out for track and field. 

“Nathan,” he gasps in a breath, yells it back out. A few feet down the hall, he hears someone else’s door crack open on its hinges. Doesn’t care. “Open the door.”

A clunk as the deadbolt withdraws, then the door swings in and he sees ginger hair, freckles, green eyes. It takes a second to place the face, find the name, remember that Nathan lives in a double room. “Kevin, right?” 

“Yeah,”Kevin doesn’t bother trying to guess his name. Not that Spencer blames him. It’s not as though they’ve been introduced. He hasn’t even been over here much, since privacy became a real concern. “He’s not here.”

“Can I come in anyway?” he asks, and shoves his way in without waiting. Nathan’s half of the room is cleaner than he remembers. Bed made, desk cleared off, bookshelf empty. Nothing in the drawers or the wardrobe. He jerks open Nathan’s closet to find empty hangers, and two filled suitcases sitting side by side at the bottom. 

“Shit,” Kevin says, behind him. “Did he flunk out?”

When the laugh bubbles up in his throat, Spencer can’t keep it from spilling out. And then its too easy to keep going. To laugh until his vision swims and his throat burns, and he has to grab at the wardrobe for support. Behind him, Kevin says something, some version of ‘you alright?’ In a minute, he’ll have to turn around. Have to wipe his eyes and catch his breath, and get campus security on the phone. 

But just now, it’s all too funny. Kevin’s question, the absurdity of the situation. Not to mention stupid, stupid Spencer Reid, who’s spent all this time walking on thin air. Waiting for the bottom to drop out of the world, when it turns out it was never there at all.

— 

**Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006 **

The best coffee shop in Quantico is on the other side of town. Garcia’s favourite Chinese takeout place, however, is just a few blocks away. When Reid shows up with an armful of cardboard cartons and a pair of chopsticks (plus a plastic fork, stuffed in his messenger bag), she looks dangerously close to kissing him. 

Morgan and Prentiss are out canvassing again, so they have the bullpen to themselves. Garcia steals Morgan’s chair and kicks her feet up on his desk as she digs into a container of Singapore noodles. Her shoes are lime green patent leather and Reid wonders, not for the first time, what Garcia would look like if she’d decided on a career as a costumed crusader instead of becoming a technical analyst. 

“Not that I object to you waiting on me hand and foot,” Garcia says, stealing a potsticker out of the communal tray. “But shouldn’t you be out with the rest of the Scoobies for the scavenger hunt?”

“Geographic profile,” he raises a shoulder in the direction of the scribbled-on map on his desk. “And more victimology. In case there’s another—” he trails off, and pretends it’s because he’s trying to fish the last of the ginger chicken out of the bottom of his carton. Another body. At this point, would that make things worse, or better? 

“Do you still think he did it?” she swings her feet back onto the floor, leaning a shoulder against the desk instead. 

“You know, no one’s asked me that yet,” he feels himself blink harder than he needs to, and looks away. 

“That’s not a ‘yes.’”

“It’s not a ‘no’ either,” he points out, and slides down in his desk chair, until the top of his head is barely visible over the seat back. 

“But, if you could choose, you’d like it to be someone else, right?” She copies his posture, wheels the chair forward. The FBI equivalent of a pillow fort. Reid isn’t sure he likes where this is going.

“It’s not that simple.” She nods, and doesn’t respond. A nice, open silence for him to fill. He almost smiles. Gideon would be proud. “Before he,” the words stick in his throat. He can’t remember the last time he’s talked about this. That, one, awkward conversation with Gideon before he joined the Bureau? He can’t remember if he managed to get this part out, even then. 

Then again, Gideon didn’t have Nathan’s entire medical history saved in .pdf on his computer desktop.

“When Nathan tried to kill himself, he left me a letter. A—a suicide note, would be the correct term, I suppose.”

He doesn’t miss Garcia’s wince, and he’s ready to stop. More than happy to stop. Except she’s nodding at him to keep going. And ever since he saw Nathan at the metro station, he’s felt like he’s leaking, like every feeling and thought he’s kept to himself is boiling up, trying to get out at the seams. 

“It was just lying there, outside my door. I know he must have come by while I was working. If I’d heard him,” he pokes his fork into the container again, dragging the tines through congealing pink sauce. “What would I have done? Could I have stopped him?”

“Reid, you can’t do that to—”

“I ask all these questions. But, most of the time? I think I would still have had this conversation. Just, four or five years ago, instead of now. And instead of sitting here, maybe I’d be in interrogation room two, telling all of you how he just,” his voice catches, and this time he lets himself smile. “Seemed so normal. I think, sometimes being there doesn’t change anything.”

“When this is finished, you’re coming over,” Garcia says in her don’t-argue-with-me-mister voice. “We’ll play Mario Kart until you can’t close your eyes without seeing Koopa shells.”

He nods, but her words barely register. Something’s tugging at him, in the back of his head. 

_Sometimes being there doesn’t change anything._

_Failure._  

Oh.

“Garcia, can you find out if anyone’s sent out a press release about that crime announcement yet?” 

She blinks at him, then smiles, kisses two of her fingers and taps them against his temple. “On it, Master Grayson.”

This time, Reid finds he doesn’t mind the nickname so much. 

— 

Garcia’s list of names is almost three pages long. Reid’s looked up about half of them, and is in the process of Googling the Coalition for American Family Values, when Hotch’s door bangs open. 

“DC Police just found another body,” he says, when Gideon and JJ lean out of their offices. “Across from the Capitol Building. Witnesses identified her as another local sex worker, and she’s been stabbed in the stomach.” 

“Was there any message on the body this time?” JJ calls, already on her way down the stairs. Hotch and Gideon start towards her as well. Their paths converge near Reid’s desk, and he jumps up so he won’t be the only one in a chair.

“Nothing this time,” Hotch says. “Either he’s devolving, or it’s unrelated.” 

“A dead body across from the Capitol Building, less than two days before a major announcement concerning prostitution sounds like a message to me,” she replies. And that’s Reid’s cue. 

“Actually, Garcia and I checked, and there’s no information about the announcement available to the general public. The release Congresswoman Steyer’s office sent out only says there’s going to be a press conference the day after tomorrow, not what it’ll be about.”

“But the bill’s sponsors would have to be notified ahead of time,” JJ chimes in, “so they could draft their own releases.”

“Our Unsub feels powerless,” he grabs the list off his desk and holds it out, so the rest of the team can get a look at it. “The only thing worse than being a non-entity on the DC scene? Watching someone else take credit for your work—the work you’re doing out on the streets, on the front lines. He doesn’t want to stop killing. He wants us to help. To thank him.”

“Get Garcia to pare down her list as much as she can,” Hotch pulls out his cell phone and starts back towards his office. And he’s not sure, but Reid thinks there might be a hint of a smile on his face. “JJ, you call in Morgan and Prentiss,” he adds, over his shoulder. “I’ll get us the Congresswoman.”

— 

**Pasadena, California  
February 1999**

It’s Nathan’s mother who finally calls him, almost two days later. From the sounds in the background, she must be making the call on a hospital phone, and he’s choking back so much hope that he can barely manage a weak “Hello?”

“Spencer Reid? This is Mrs. Harris.” Her voice sounds tired, but calm. If he were—if anything serious had happened, she’d sound worse. Unless she’s in shock. 

“That’s me. I’m Spencer,” he swallows down another lump of hope, and grimaces at the taste in his mouth. He hasn’t brushed his teeth in two days. Hasn’t done anything that would keep him away from the phone for more than a few minutes. “Is Nathan—how is he?” 

“He’s in recovery,” she says, and Spencer lets his head thump down against the desk, too tired to hold it up any longer. “A... girl at the motel he checked into called the police before he could lose too much blood.”

And there’s no part of Spencer wants to ask what she means by that. Details are the last thing he wants. “Can I see him?”

“He can have visitors for a few minutes, if you come by this afternoon. He’s on the fourth floor at Huntington Hospital, in the east wing. Do you know how to get here?” 

“I’ll be there,” he promises, as though he could do anything else.

— 

Spencer’s never liked the smell of hospitals. Industrial grade disinfectant, detergent, rubber. Close your eyes, and you’d never guess you were in a building dedicated to the inner workings of the human body. 

“I’m sorry about the letter,” Nathan says. His voice has a doped-up, dreamy quality to it, which Spencer assumes has something to do with the IV needle taped in place on his arm. The dressings on his wrists are held down with tape, too, but he’s trying not to look at those. “That was kind of shitty. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah.” There’s a window in Nathan’s room. Probably a decent view, if they’re on the side of the building he thinks they are. Right now the curtains are drawn, the silhouette of the fading afternoon sun the only sign of the outside world. Spencer stares at it until he can see the round, glowing ball with his eyes closed. 

Honestly, he thought he’d have more to say right now.

“Do you still have the box?”

“I threw it out,” he says, and pretends he can’t see the flicker of disappointment in Nathan’s eyes. 

“Good.”

“Yeah.” 

The tape on Nathan’s right wrist is starting to come loose at the end. Spencer watches him pick at it with his fingernails, rolling it back on itself as it comes away from the rest of the dressing. He should tell him to stop that. Right after he tells Nathan how much he scared him, how relieved he is to see him alive, how he would have tried to help, if he’d known anything before. How he’s so, so sorry.

“Mom’s looking at hospitals in back east.” Nathan’s picked about an inch of tape free by now. Spencer wonders if he’s even aware his hands are still moving. “Once they discharge me, she wants to find me a,” in his lap his fingers jerk, making quotation marks in the air, “long-term solution to my problem.”

“Oh.” It’s not a shock. In fact, he’s surprised at how little it registers at all. “I guess, this is it?”

Nathan nods, slowly, like the words are taking longer than usual to sink in. Or maybe they’re not sinking in at all. “Yeah. I guess.” 

There’s a rap of knuckles against wood, and Spencer looks up to see a nurse standing in the door frame. “Sorry to interrupt, but—”

“It’s okay,” he pushes himself up from the visitor’s chair. Nathan’s picking at his wrists again and either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “I’ll go.”

He hesitates at the door. And when Nathan looks up, maybe their eyes catch. Or maybe he’s just looking that way because he can hear sounds from the hallway.

“I love you,” he mumbles, more to the door frame than anything, then leaves without waiting for an answer.

And that, Spencer guesses, is it. 

— 

**Quantico, Virginia  
November 2006 **

One of the first things Reid notices about Ronald Weems is how short he is. Five-foot-eight, maybe. Smaller than life. Not surprising, given the details of the case, but the sort of thing Reid imagines a lot of newspaper articles will mention, once he’s been formally charged. 

For now, Weems is writing out his confession/manifesto under Aaron Hotchner’s watchful eye. It’s not the end of the case—there are still a few witness statements to take, and more than a few forms to fill out—but it’s close. Close enough, Reid tells himself as he edges his way out of the observation room, that no one will miss him if he disappears for twenty minutes or so. 

He doesn’t quite run to reception. Too obvious in an office building, even at this time of night. But there are a few long stretches of hallway between the BAU and the main entrance, and if he takes a few of the empty ones at a jog, it’s just because travelling at a slightly accelerated pace is a more efficient use of his time. 

Outside, Nathan’s standing on the pavement, hands jammed in his pockets, pretending to be interested in a crack in the concrete. Reid wonders how long he’s been here. Probably not that long—they’ve only had Weems in custody for an hour, and there’s a process for getting out of FBI custody, too. But he’s been waiting longer than he’d like. The tension in his shoulders alone makes that clear. 

“Hey,” Reid says. “Do you need someone to show you how to get to the metro station? The first train should be coming soon.” 

“It’s this way, right?” Nathan asks. His smile is almost blinding, and for the first time all day—longer than that, if he’s being honest—Reid feels something in him relax. Feels, dare he say it, normal.

They walk three blocks in silence before he asks, “When I saw you at the station, were you actually there about the case?”

“Kind of,” Nathan shrugs, walks another few steps, then stops altogether. “I saw your name on that poster, at school, and. I wanted to apologise. When we were,” he shakes his head, cups the back of his neck with one hand. “God, I was so fucked up back then. I didn’t say half of what I should have.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Reid starts walking again, but Nathan doesn’t follow. “It was a long time ago.” 

“I know, but, I think about it sometimes. Us. How it ended.” He takes a few steps forward. Not walking, just crowding into Reid’s personal space. And he knew this was coming. That’s why he’s out here, isn’t it? So they can get some closure. Except, that’s not what this feels like. “I know love isn’t really part of the profile, but. I really did, you know? Love you.” 

It hurts. He’d been hoping it wouldn’t, hoping he could take this conversation in a stride. As though the whole case hasn’t been building to this, or something like it. But now he’s here, and there’s a tightness in his throat he can’t work out, a weight in his stomach. He pulls back, starts walking again. Just move through it, that’s all he has to do. Maybe the elephant in the room doesn’t always need confronting. “I know.” 

“Spencer. Wait,” Nathan’s hand on his arm, dragging him sideways. His back hits something hard—the side of a building, he registers that much—and the weight in his stomach turns to ice. Nathan’s hands come up to frame his face, push his hair back, stroke down his neck. 

The press of his mouth on Reid’s is so familiar he could weep.

And it would be so easy to tangle a hand in Nathan’s too-short hair, to pull his body in close, to pretend it’s still 1999 and nothing’s changed. But the dead, frozen weight in his stomach is still there, even as Nathan licks his mouth open and pushes against him. The adrenaline pouring into his veins, his hands limp at his sides, the silent alarm going off in his head, they’re wrong too. 

“Stop,” he slides to the side, back still against the building, but away from Nathan’s body. “I came out to give you this,” he fumbles in his pants pocket, pulls out a copy of his business card, bent at one corner now. “It’s got my work number and e-mail. I can give you my home and cellular numbers, too. So you have someone else to call, if the fantasies come back.” 

Nathan takes the card from him in slow motion. And he’s out of reach now, but Reid’s still close enough to see something fade out of his expression, his eyes. “You don’t think I’m better, do you?” 

“I promise I tried to stop,” The words are out of his mouth before he’s had time to think them. Just another recitation in the Spencer Reid catalogue. Another few lines of text he can’t forget, no matter how much new information he piles on top of them. “But I can’t. I’m not even sure if I want to any more. I’m scared of how good this feels. How much better it might feel, to do more.”

A hand on his chest, over his heart. He feels Nathan’s fingers press in, braces himself. Instead, Nathan pushes off him, and the business card cradled in his palm flutters in the air between them before landing at Reid’s feet. 

“Goodnight, Spencer.”

He watches Nathan walk away, until perspective makes him disappear into the night. Nothing more than a smear of shadow and streetlight. 

This time, Reid’s fairly certain it’s not the end of anything. 

—

_He wept. He promised 'a new start'.  
I made no comment. What should I resent?_

T.S. Eliot 

[[And over the fade to black...]](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrdpliMfoAM)

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, while I never wrote more of this AU, I always assumed that in this universe Spencer's downward spiral into dilaudid addiction involves sleeping with Nathan as well. Themoreyouknow.gif!


End file.
